A semi-alternating direction method for a 2-D fractional FitzHugh–Nagumo monodomain model on an approximate irregular domain

A FitzHugh–Nagumo monodomain model has been used to describe the propagation of the electrical potential in heterogeneous cardiac tissue. In this paper, we consider a two-dimensional fractional FitzHugh–Nagumo monodomain model on an irregular domain. The model consists of a coupled Riesz space fractional nonlinear reaction–diffusion model and an ordinary differential equation, describing the ionic fluxes as a function of the membrane potential. Second, we use a decoupling technique and focus on solving the Riesz space fractional nonlinear reaction–diffusion model. A novel spatially second-order accurate semi-implicit alternating direction method (SIADM) for this model on an approximate irregular domain is proposed. Third, stability and convergence of the SIADM are proved. Finally, some numerical examples are given to support our theoretical analysis and these numerical techniques are employed to simulate a two-dimensional fractional FitzHugh–Nagumo model on both an approximate circular and an approximate irregular domain.