Particle model of creation and annihilation captures termination dynamics of spiral defect chaos.

Abstract

Excitable media, including a cardiac tissue, can exhibit spiral defect chaos (SDC), during which spiral waves are continuously created and annihilated. Simulating this behavior typically requires solving large-scale reaction-diffusion systems, limiting computational feasibility especially for larger model domains. To address this, we have previously developed a particle model that was capable of replicating spiral-wave annihilation via short-range attraction and diffusion. In this study, we extend that model to capture spiral-wave creation by introducing a short-lived repulsive interaction between newly formed particle pairs. Our extended model accurately reproduces the termination statistics of SDC in cardiac simulations, including mean termination time, offering a simplified yet faithful description of SDC dynamics at much lesser computational cost.