Crisis-induced intermittent bursting in reaction-diffusion chemical systems

Abstract

We report on numerical evidence for intermittent bursting phenomena in a one-dimensional reaction-diffusion system that mimics spatiotemporal pattern formation in the Couette flow reactor. This bursting regime is attained via an interior crisis when decreasing the diffusion coefficient. The intermittent occurrence of spatially localized structures can be understood in terms of Shil’nikov’s homoclinic chaos. This diffusion-induced chaotic bursting is likely to be observed in bench experiments.