Chemical reaction fronts in ordered and disordered cellular flows with opposing winds

We present experiments on the motion of chemical fronts in ordered and disordered vortex flows with imposed uniform winds. Fronts in a chain of alternating vortices are found to freeze (pin to the separatrix) for a wide range of opposing winds that grows nonlinearly with the characteristic strength of the underlying vorticity. Experiments in spatially disordered flows demonstrate that freezing of fronts is common to cellular flows; furthermore, it is not dependent on boundary conditions. We therefore anticipate similar pinning in a wide range of 2D cellular flows and front-producing systems.