Before revision: Outcomes of propagating pulse collisions are of fundamental importance in many fields , ranging from physiology to industrial devices. Pulses are traditionally classified as solitons if upon collision they behave as particles, or excitable-pulses if they annihilate each other. Collisions in a non-equilibrium system with mass conservation, a common property of natural systems, exhibit rich dynamics that range from soliton-like to annihilation, and even nucleation of new pulses post-collision.
After revision: Outcomes of propagating pulse collisions are of fundamental importance in many fields , ranging from biological cells to chemical reactions and ecological populations. Traditionally, mutual annihilation of two colliding pulses is regarded as their prototypical signature. Here we show that colliding excitable pulses may exhibit soliton-like to annihilation, and even nucleation of new pulses post-collision.