Pulse dynamics and interaction on anisotropic surfaces: a computer-assisted study

The anisotropy of metal crystal surfaces is known to affect the dynamics of travelling concentration wavetrains (including front- and pulse-like waves ) observed in heterogeneous catalytic reactions. Motivated by experiments o n microdesigned catalyst surfaces we present a computer-assisted study on t he stability of pulse-like solutions of reaction-diffusion equations in thi n (quasi-one-dimensional) anisotropic media. Results on a period doubling i nstability of a rotating pulse and on the interaction of two pulses in a sy stem with periodic boundaries are reported. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.