GALILEAN TRANSFORMATIONS AND THE EVOLUTIO N OF AUTOWAVE FRONTS IN EXTERNAL FIELDS

We consider autowave regimes in two-dimensional excitable media in the presence of an external electric field, using Galilean transformation s in the reaction-diffusion equations. It is shown that the transforma tion properties of these equations lead to some general relations for the autowave front and vortex drift velocities, independently of the c oncrete form of nonlinear terms in the equations. The general field de pendence of the critical autowave characteristics is determined. The s imple kinematic method discussed in this work is applicable for studyi ng autowave evolution in three-dimensional and many-component excitabl e media.