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.

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.

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.