Spiral wave drift induced by stimulating wave trains.

We investigate the drift of a spiral wave core in a homogeneous excitable medium under the influence of a periodic stimulation by wave trains close to the core. Two important results were found. First, as opposed to existing theories of spiral wave drift, we observe drift induced by wave trains with periods larger than the period of the freely rotating spiral wave. Second, when investigating the drift of meandering spirals we found that the property of meandering of spirals is not robust against periodic stimulations. Simple phenomenological arguments are provided to explain these observations. (c) 2001 American Institute of Physics.