A route to chaos in a conservative system of three interacting Langmuir waves

This paper presents the results of numerical calculations of a route to chaos in a conservative Hamiltonian system of three Langmuir waves interacting with each other through three-wave couplings. The route is investigated by studying time series, power spectra, phase space portraits and Lyapnov exponents of wave variables for several combinations of wave vectors. The results show that the system follows a route which is very similar to the Ruelle–Takens–Newhouse scenario observed in dissipative systems, and widths and shifts of peaks in power spectra appeared due to the three moderate strength wave interactions. The breaks of tori in the system are also numerically investigated by studying the dependency of Maximum Lyapnov exponents for wave-variables on a parameter which represents the nonlinearity of the system.