Wave-train induced unpinning of weakly anchored vortices in excitable media

Abstract

A free vortex in excitable media can be displaced and removed by a wave-train. However, simple physical arguments suggest that vortices anchored to large inexcitable obstacles cannot be removed similarly. We show that unpinning of vortices attached to obstacles smaller than the core radius of the free vortex is possible through pacing. The wave-train frequency necessary for unpinning increases with the obstacle size and we present a geometric explanation of this dependence. Our model-independent results suggest that decreasing excitability of the medium can facilitate pacing-induced removal of vortices in cardiac tissue.

Published version

References in corpus (2)

• Termination of Reentry in an Inhomogeneous Ring of Model Cardiac Cells
• Controlling spatiotemporal chaos in excitable media using an array of control points

Cited by in corpus (4)

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• Anomalous drift of spiral waves in heterogeneous excitable media
• Nonlinear diffusion & thermo-electric coupling in a two-variable model of cardiac action potential
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