Low Dimensional Chaos in Ion Sheath Dynamics

Abstract

Dynamics of externally driven ion sheath in the double plasma device has been investigated by numerically solving a nonlinear differential equation. The global dynamical changes of the system have been examined by evaluating parametric changes of the Poincaré map and the maximum Lyapunov exponent. The transitions to chaos caused by the cascade bifurcation and intermittency are clearly shown by graphical methods. The correlation dimension calculated for a strange attractor, D₂∼ 1.54, agrees well with the experimental one indicates that the chaos is low dimensional, and the system can be described by the low dimensional equation.