Front explosion in a periodically forced surface reaction
  Resonantly-forced oscillatory reaction-diffusion systems can exhibit fronts with complicated interfacial structure separating phase-locked homogeneous states. For values of the forcing amplitude below a critical value the front "explodes" and the width of the interfacial zone grows without bound. Such front explosion phenomena are investigated for a realistic model of catalytic CO oxidation on a Pt(110) surface in the 2:1 and 3:1 resonantly-forced regimes. In the 2:1 regime, the fronts are stationary and the front explosion leads to a defect-mediated turbulent state. In the 3:1 resonantly-forced system, the fronts propagate. The front velocity tends to zero as the front explosion point is reached and the final asymptotic state is a 2:1 resonantly-locked labyrinthine pattern. The front dynamics described here should be observable in experiment since the model has been shown to capture essential features of the CO oxidation reaction. 
J\"orn Davidsen, Alexander Mikhailov, Raymond Kapral