RESPONSE OF THE FERROCYANIDE HYDROGEN PEROXIDE SULFITE SYSTEM TO A PULSED-LIGHT

Response of the ferrocyanide-hydrogen peroxide-sulfite system to the p ulsed light perturbation has been examined. A pulse light in the visib le region induces two kinds of pulse response: one is a sharp spike wi th a threshold and the other is a relatively slow response without thr eshold. The autocatalytic reaction scheme involving HO2. as a key spec ies is responsible for the observation. The proposed mechanism is comp ared with the excitability in the Belousov-Zhabotinsky system to chara cterize the nonlinearity in the present system. The present analysis s uggests that the pulse response experiment is useful in revealing deta ils of the reaction scheme. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science B.V.