Phys. Rev. Lett. 90, 124101 (2003) [4 pages]Mechanism of Standing Wave Patterns in Cardiac MuscleReceived 6 November 2002; published 26 March 2003 Recent experiments [ R. A. Gray et al. Phys. Rev. Lett. 87 168104 (2001)] have revealed striking standing wave patterns in cardiac muscle. In excitable media, such as cardiac tissue where colliding waves annihilate, standing wave patterns result from a fully nonlinear mechanism. We present a possible physical mechanism explaining these patterns. The phenomenon does not depend on the precise excitable model chosen. Analogies are drawn with weak links in superconductors, and phase-slip solutions in the Ginzburg-Landau equations. © 2003 The American Physical Society URL:
http://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevLett.90.124101
DOI:
10.1103/PhysRevLett.90.124101
PACS:
05.45.–a, 87.19.Hh
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