 
 We investigate existence, stability, and instability of anchored rotating spiral waves in a model for geometric curve evolution. We find existence in a parameter regime limiting on a purely eikonal curve evolution. We study stability and instability both theoretically in this limiting regime and numerically, finding both oscillatory, at first convective instability, and saddle-node bifurcations. Our results in particular shed light onto instability of spiral waves in reaction-diffusion systems caused by an instability of wave trains against transverse modulations.
@article{cortez2025instabilityanchoredspiralsgeometric,
      title={Instability of anchored spirals in geometric flows}, 
      author={Anthony Cortez and Nan Li and Nathan Mihm and Alice Xu and Xiaoxing Yu and Arnd Scheel},
      year={2025},
      eprint={2504.07270},
      archivePrefix={arXiv},
      primaryClass={nlin.PS},
      url={https://arxiv.org/abs/2504.07270}, 
      }  
 We study existence, asymptotics, and stability of spiral waves in a driven curvature approximation, supplemented with an anchoring condition on a circle of finite radius. We analyze the motion of curves written as graphs in polar coordinates, finding spiral waves as rigidly rotating shapes. The existence analysis reduces to a planar ODE and asymptotics are given through center manifold expansions. In the limit of a large core, we find rotation frequencies and corrections starting form a problem without curvature corrections. Finally, we demonstrate orbital stability of spiral waves by exploiting a comparison principle inherent to curvature driven flow.
@article{li2024,
    title={Anchored spirals in the driven curvature flow approximation}, 
    author={Nan Li and Arnd Scheel},
    year={2024},
    eprint={2312.07809},
    archivePrefix={arXiv},
    primaryClass={nlin.PS},
    url={https://arxiv.org/abs/2312.07809}, 
    }  
 We count the number of compatible pairs of indexing systems for the cyclic group $C_{p^n}$. Building on work of Balchin--Barnes--Roitzheim, we show that this sequence of natural numbers is another family of Fuss--Catalan numbers. We count this two different ways: showing how the conditions of compatibility give natural recursive formulas for the number of admissible sets and using an enumeration of ways to extend indexing systems by conceptually simpler pieces.
@article{hill2022,
      title={Counting compatible indexing systems for
      $C_{p^n}$},
      author={Michael A. Hill and Jiayun Meng and Nan Li},
      journal={Orbita Mathematicae},
      year={2022},
    }