Experimental and numerical studies of noise-induced coherent patterns in a subexcitable system

Phys Rev Lett. 2002 Apr 1;88(13):138301. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.88.138301. Epub 2002 Mar 19.

Abstract

A subexcitable medium of Belousov-Zhabotinsky (BZ) reaction subjected to external Gaussian white noise is studied in experiments and numerical simulations. We observe that at an optimal level of noise the wave sources of excited traveling waves become synchronous, as though there exists a long distance spatial correlation. The synchronous behavior fades if the noise level becomes larger or smaller. Numerical simulations confirm the experimental findings, and point out that the best synchronous behavior takes place when the signal-to-noise ratio of waves becomes largest.