DYNAMICS OF NONLINEAR-WAVES IN CHEMICAL ACTIVE MEDIA

Chemical waves are prototypes of self-organized spatio-temporal struct ures observed in a large class of distributed active media of physical , chemical or biological origin far from thermodynamic equilibrium. We discuss recent progress in the understanding of complex dynamics of s piral waves which was obtained by exploiting the possibility of extern al control of pattern formation in a light-sensitive modification of t he Belousov-Zhabotinsky reaction. Also we comment on some aspects of w ave propagation in heterogeneous media.