Velocity and stability of solitary planar travelling wave solutions of intracellular [Ca]2+.

Normal cardiac muscle contraction occurs in response to a rapid rise followed by a slower decay in intracellular calcium concentration. When cardiac muscle cells are loaded with calcium, an intracellular store releases calcium into the cytosol by the process of calcium-induced calcium release (CICR). This release contributes to the rise in intracellular calcium which in turn triggers contraction. We use two qualitative piecewise linear reaction-diffusion models of this behaviour to investigate the speed, stability and waveform of plane waves using singular perturbation techniques.