Period doubling and chaotic phenomena in homogenous dielectric-barrier discharge at atmospheric pressure a)

Summary form only given. Plasma is a typical nonlinear dynamical system with a large number of degrees of freedom, which can exhibit a rich variety of dynamical behaviors. It is known that a lot of nonlinear dynamic phenomena, such as periodic doubling bifurcation, intermittency, quasiperiodicity, and chaos, have been observed and studied experimentally and numerically in driven or undriven plasma discharge system. In this paper, we investigate the nonlinear dynamical behaviors of homogenous dielectric-barrier discharge at atmospheric pressure based on a one-dimensional fluid model. We find that, under certain conditions, a very clear period-doubling sequence to chaos can be obtained. Moreover, several periodic windows embedded in chaos, including period 3, period 5 and period 7, as well as the secondary bifurcation occurring in the periodic windows can also been observed. These behaviors should be attributed to the existence of negative differential resistance in homogenous dielectric-barrier discharge at atmospheric pressure. In addition, the discharge characteristics and spatial structures after entering bifurcation states are also investigated and discussed