CNCS 201:   Seminar Course
Fall 2003

Professor Henry Greenside

(Click on the figure to see a bigger version.) Simulation of the Bar model of a two-dimensional excitable medium consisting of carbon monoxide adsorbing to a platinum surface and being catalyzed to carbon dioxide, with some restructuring of the metal surface. Although the dynamics appears chaotic, a careful study by Matt Strain and Henry Greenside [Phys. Rev. Lett 80(11):2307-2309 (1998)] strongly suggests that all dynamics are transient, with an average transient time that grows exponentially with the size of the domain. This result may be relevant to the observation that the hearts of small mammals are less likely to enter spontaneously into a state of ventricular fibrillation.

Announcements:

• The 201 class today, Thursday October 16, is postponed. Because of a research symposium that I need to attend this afternoon, I am postponing today's class. The next class will be on Thursday, October 23, and the makeup class will be on Tuesday, October 28.

• Professor Earl Dowell will take over the 201 lectures starting on October 30.

Links:

• Movies from the Center for Arrhythmia Research of Hofstra University.

• Mike Cross Java demos for pattern-forming systems. Check out especially the demos for the Bar model, which I will be discussing in detail.

Papers:

• "Size-Dependent Transition to High-Dimensional Chaotic Dynamics in a Two-Dimensional Excitable Medium", Matthew Strain and Henry Greenside, Phys. Rev. Lett 80(11):2307-2309 (1998).

• Spatiotemporal Chaos in Large Systems: The Scaling of Complexity With Size, Henry Greenside, in the book Semi-Analytic Methods for the Navier Stokes Equations ed. K. Coughlin, CRM Proceedings and Lecture Notes, Volume 20, pages 9-40 (1999).

• Karhunen-Loeve Decomposition of Extensive Chaos , Scott M. Zoldi and Henry S. Greenside, Phys. Rev. Lett. 78(9):1687-1690 (1997).