Nonlinear Chemical Dynamics

Brandeis University, Waltham MA

Investigators

Abstract

Irving Epstein and Anatol Zhabotinsky of Brandeis University are supported by the Theoretical and Computational Chemistry Program to pursue research on nonlinear chemical dynamics, specifically experimental and computational investigations of pattern-formation in reaction-diffusion systems. Light will be used to produce new types of patterns. A rarely studied bifurcation (the short-wave instability) will be studied under global negative feedback, and forced and unforced chaotic and multiperiodic chemical oscillators will be investigated. Pattern formation in nonuniform media, and in a new hypophosphite-containing chemical system, will be explored. Pattern formation in chemistry is a central problem in modern macroscopic chemical kinetics. Reaction-diffusion systems constitute the most convenient analog models for pattern formation in neurobiology, catalysis, and ecology. These phenomena involve global feedback and/or the propagation of chemical waves through nonuniform media.