Transient complex oscillations in a closed chemical system with coupled autocatalysis

In this study, hydroquinone was introduced to the classic Belousov-Zhabotinsky (BZ) reaction to build up coupled autocatalytic feedbacks. Various complex dynamical behaviors including successive period-adding bifurcations, irregular oscillations, and frequency modulations were observed in the coupled reaction system. Not only the complexity of oscillations but also the time period during which complex oscillations persist were found to depend greatly on the initial concentration of hydroquinone, which was expected to manifest the coupling strength in the studied system. Dependence of the observed transient complex oscillations on concentrations of ferroin, sulfuric acid, bromate, and malonic acid was also characterized systematically. Numerical simulations with a modified BZ model via incorporating reactions involving hydroquinone and products of hydroquinone qualitatively reproduced the influence of hydroquinone seen in experiments.