Period doubling in glow discharges: local versus global differential conductivity

Abstract

Short planar glow discharges coupled to a resistive layer exhibit a wealth of spontaneous spatio-temporal patterns. Several authors have suggested effective reaction-diffusion-models to explore similarities with other pattern forming systems. To test these effective models, we here investigate the temporal oscillations of a glow discharge layer coupled to a linear resistor. We find an unexpected cascade of period doubling events. This shows that the inner structure of the discharge is more complex than can be described by a reaction-diffusion-model with negative differential conductivity.

4 pages, 4 figures, submitted to PRL

References in corpus (2)

• Transition from Townsend to glow discharge: subcritical, mixed or supercritical
• Dependence of the transition from Townsend to glow discharge on secondary emission

Cited by in corpus (4)

• Spatiotemporal patterns in a DC semiconductor-gas-discharge system: stability analysis and full numerical solutions
• Oscillations in DC driven "barrier" discharges: numerical solutions, stability analysis and phase diagram
• Oscillation modes of dc microdischarges with parallel-plate geometry
• Entrainment by Spatiotemporal Chaos in Glow Discharge-Semiconductor Systems