THEORY OF SELF-REPLICATION AND GRANULATION OF SPIKE AUTOSOLITONS

Recent experimental and numerical studies have shown that self-replica tion and granulation of the solitary patterns may lead to labyrinthine patterns or turbulence. We propose mechanisms for self-replication an d granulation of one of the basic types of solitary patterns - spike a utosolitons. We find the conditions for these effects to occur on the basis of an analytical study of the shape and stability of static spik e autosolitons in a reaction-diffusion system. We prove that these eff ects are related to the buildup of the shore-wave perturbations of a c ertain shape.