Nonlinear dynamics experiments in plasmas

TL;DR

This paper explores various nonlinear dynamics phenomena in plasmas, including chaos, bifurcations, and resonance effects, through experimental observations and analysis of glow discharge plasma systems.

Contribution

It presents new experimental findings on chaos transitions, bifurcations, and resonance phenomena in glow discharge plasma, expanding understanding of plasma nonlinear dynamics.

Findings

Observation of chaos to order transition in plasma

Detection of homoclinic bifurcation in plasma

Evidence of coherence and stochastic resonance in plasma

Abstract

The study of nonlinear dynamics or chaos theory has emerged in the last three decades or so as an important interdisciplinary area of research encompassing a wide range of fields like: fluids, plasmas, biomedical sciences, finance, turbulence, astronomy, material sciences, etc. In plasma chaos was first experimentally observed by Boswell. Different other nonlinear dynamics related phenomena like, the intermittency route to a chaos, Homoclinic chaos, Period adding route to chaos and period subtracting, mode locking, period pulling, etc., had been observed by several researchers. In this thesis, we have presented (a) anode glow related observation of chaos to order transition and homoclinic bifurcation; (b) coherence resonance and stochastic resonance; and self organized criticality behavior in glow discharge plasma.