Filament-induced Surface Spiral Turbulence in Three-dimensional Excitable Media

Filament-induced surface defect-mediated turbulence in bounded three-dimensional (3D) excitable media is investigated in the regime of negative line tension. In this regime turbulence arises due to unstable filaments associated with scroll waves and is purely a 3D phenomenon. It is shown that the statistical properties of the turbulent defect dynamics can be used to distinguish surface defect-mediated turbulence from its 2D analog. Mechanisms for the creation and annihilation of surface defects are discussed and Markov rate equations are employed to model the results.