Self-replicating pulses and Sierpinski gaskets in excitable media

Abstract

In our previous papers, we have shown by computer simulations that a Sierpinski gasket pattern appears in a Bonhoeffer-van der Pol type reaction-diffusion system. In this paper, we show another class of regular self-similar structure which is found in four different excitable reaction-diffusion systems. This result strongly implies that the existence of the self-similar spatiotemporal evolution is universal in excitable reaction-diffusion media.