Fronts between rhythms: Spatiotemporal dynamics of extended polyrhythmic media

Abstract

We study the propagation of fronts in extended oscillatory reaction-diffusion systems that contain several coexisting limit cycles. In contrast with the variational behavior, fronts between regions oscillating in two different limit cycles are found to propagate not necessarily towards the region of the less stable limit cycle, but towards the regions of the largest amplitudes, provided that the frequency mismatch between the cycles is sufficiently large. In other words, the smaller oscillations can always be made to control the whole system. © 2007 The American Physical Society.