Journal of Physical Chemistry A, Vol.112, No.5, 826-832, 2008
Response dynamics to pulsed perturbations of the hydrogen peroxide-thiosulfate-Cu2+ reaction
The hydrogen peroxide-thiosulfate-Cu2+ reaction operated in a continuous flow stirred tank reactor is a pH-oscillator known to provide three different steady states, hysteresis, and oscillations. In addition to the various dynamical regimes established earlier, a question arises whether the reaction can be also excitable, whereby the system strongly responds to a small but supercritical external addition of certain chemical species. We carried out experiments aimed at finding excitability and studying response dynamics to single and repeated pulsed perturbations of varying amplitude and period. We found that the reaction displays a remarkable excitatory dynamics when forced. The available mechanism of the reaction involves several adjustable parameters, which need to be tuned so that the model corresponds to experimentally observed bifurcation diagrams. Our experimental findings are compared with numerical calculations, suggesting that the model is far from complete.