Instabilities of the resonance attractor for spiral waves in an excitable medium.

During an experimental study of the resonance attractor for spiral waves in the light-sensitive Belousov-Zhabotinsky reaction, strong deviations of the attractor trajectories from circular orbits are observed if the time delay in the feedback loop becomes relatively long. A theory is developed that reduces the spiral wave dynamics under a long-delayed control to a higher order iterative map. Then the observed deviations are explained to be a result of instabilities appearing due to the Neimark bifurcation of the map. The theoretical predictions are in good agreement with the experimental data.