Scroll wave meandering induced by phase difference in a three-dimensional excitable medium.

We investigated scroll waves in an inhomogeneous excitable 3D system with gradient of excitability. The gradient promotes twisting of the scroll waves. Sufficiently large excitability gradient enhances the twisting and causes simple scroll waves to transition to meandering scroll waves. For the twist-induced instability of scroll waves, we analyzed the stability of 2D spiral waves sliced from the twisted scroll in the vertical direction. The 3D problem is simplified by taking into account the diffusive coupling in the third direction as a time-delayed perturbation to the 2D spiral wave. An additional "negative mass" term measuring the twist thus arises in the 2D system and induces the transition from simple rotation to meandering. A further increase in the gradient ruins partially the unity of the meandering scrolls and generates semiturbulence, the analogs of which were observed in the Belousov-Zhabotinski reaction. We also generated the phase diagram in the parameter space by adjusting the threshold for excitation of the media.