Galilean transformations and evolution of autowave fronts in external fields

We consider autowave regimes in two-dimensional excitable media in the presence of an external electric field, using Galilean transformations in the reaction—diffusion equations. It is shown that the transformation properties of these equations lead to some general relations for the autowave front and vortex drift velocities, independently of the concrete form of nonlinear terms in the equations. The general field dependence of the critical autowave characteristics is determined. Simple kinematic method discussed in this work is applicable for studying autowave evolution in three-dimensional and multicomponent excitable media.