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An experimental investigation on the self-excited spiky oscillations in a glow discharge plasma device is presented. The system showed a continuous transition from chaotic bursting to chaotic spiking states with the increase in the applied discharge voltage at a particular pressure. Below a threshold discharge voltage, the system exhibits a fixed point dynamical behaviour and with the increase in the discharge voltage bursting type oscillations appear which are identified as “fold/fold circle” type. The occurrence of the relaxation type spiky oscillations is attributed to the formation and disruption of anode double layer. The burst phases occurred intermittently and the frequency of their occurrence increased with increase in the discharge voltage and finally the oscillation turned into spiking behaviour. The intermittent oscillations manifested the scaling law of the average laminar phase with respect to the change in the discharge voltage. The scaling law of the intermittent oscillations was similar to type III intermittency. During the transition, the system changes its behaviour from long range correlation to long range anti correlation. Detrended fluctuation analysis technique has been used to identify the nature of long range correlations. We found that bursting oscillations show scale invariant, long-range correlation behaviour whereas spiking oscillations show scale invariant, long range anti correlation behaviour.

The excitations of nonlinear magnetosonic lump waves induced by orbiting charged space debris objects in the Low Earth Orbital (LEO) plasma region are investigated in presence of the ambient magnetic field. These nonlinear waves are found to be governed by the forced Kadomtsev-Petviashvili (KP) type model equation, where the forcing term signifies the source current generated by different possible motions of charged space debris particles in the LEO plasma region. Different analytic lump wave solutions that are stable for both slow and fast magnetosonic waves in presence of charged space debris particles are found for the first time. The dynamics of exact pinned accelerated lump waves is explored in detail. Approximate lump wave solutions with time-dependent amplitudes and velocities are analyzed through perturbation methods for different types of localized space debris functions; yielding approximate pinned accelerated lump wave solutions. These new results may pave new direction in this field of research., Comment: 21 Pages and 10 Figures

We consider the nonlinear ion-acoustic wave induced by the orbiting charged space debris in the plasma environment generated at Low Earth Orbital (LEO) region. The generated nonlinear ion-acoustic wave is shown to be governed by the forced Korteweg-de Vries equation with the forcing function dependent on the charged space debris function. For a specific relationship between the forcing debris function and the nonlinear ion-acoustic wave, the forced KdV equation turns to be a completely integrable system where the debris function obeys a definite non-holonomic constraint. A special exact accelerated soliton solution (velocity of the soliton changes over time whereas its amplitude remains constant) has been derived for the ion-acoustic wave for the first time. On the other hand, the amplitude of the solitonic debris function varies with time, and its shape changes during propagation. Approximate ion-acoustic solitary wave solutions with time-varying amplitude and velocity, have been derived for different weak localized charged debris functions. Possible applications of the obtained results in space plasma physics are stated along with future the direction of research., 15 pages, 5 figures, thoroughly revised

Interplay of transition of floating potential fluctuations in a glow discharge plasma in the toroidal vacuum vessel of SINP tokamak has been observed. With variation in the strength of the vertical and toroidal magnetic fields, regular and inverted relaxation oscillations as well as sinusoidal oscillations are observed with the slow and fast time scale of the relaxation oscillations reversing their nature at a high value of vertical magnetic field strength. However for small value of toroidal magnetic field the transitions follow relaxation $\rightarrow$ chaotic oscillations with the chaotic nature prevailing at higher values of toroidal magnetic field. Evolution of associated anode fireball dynamics under the action of increasing vertical, toroidal as well as increasing vertical field at a fixed toroidal field (mixed field) of different strength has been studied. Estimation of phase coherence index for each case has been carried out to examine the evidence of finite nonlinear interaction. A comprehensive study of the dynamics of the fireball is found to be associated with the values of phase coherence index. The index is found to take maximum values for the case of toroidal, mixed field when there is an existence of power/energy concentration in a large region of frequency band. A detailed study of the scaling region using detrended fluctuation analysis (DFA) by estimating the scaling exponent has been carried out for increasing values of discharge voltage, vertical, toroidal as well as the mixed field (toroidal plus vertical). A persistence long range behaviour associated with the nature of the anode glow has been investigated in case of higher values of toroidal, mixed field whereas increasing DV, vertical magnetic field leads to a perfectly correlated dynamics with values of scaling exponent greater than unity, 19 pages, 17 figures and 1 table

The evidence of finite nonlinear interaction in a DC glow discharge plasma has been demonstrated by estimating phase coherence index for different types external forcing techniques likewise noise, sinusoidal, square etc. The existence of finite phase coherence index i.e finite correlation prompts us to carry out nonlinearity analysis using delay vector variance (DVV). Finite nonlinear interaction obtained from phase coherence index values is observed to be predominant at a particular amplitude of square forcing which corroborates our nonlinearity analysis using DVV. Existence of phase coherence index has been demonstrated introducing continuous wavelet transform (CWT). Characterization of the difference in the phase distribution by the difference in the waveform in real space instead of dealing in Fourier space has been facilitated by introducing structure function or path length for different orders to study and identify the dynamical system. The expression of path length eventually enables us to evaluate the phase coherence index. The transition in the dynamics is observed through recurrence plot techniques which is an efficient method to observe the critical regime transitions in dynamics.

We implement different statistical analysis techniques to investigate the presence of nonlinearity in the fluctuations of a steady state glow discharge plasma (GDP). We introduce a novel ‘delay vector variance’ analysis (DVV) to allow reliable detection of nonlinearity in a plasma in presence of external forcing and magnetic field by providing some easy to interpret diagrams. The analysis has also been implemented to study numerically simulated results for the first time. An estimate of the Zscore has been carried out to detect the presence of nonlinearity in a somewhat quantitative sense. An informal test for bicoherency has been applied to detect the interaction amongst different modes obtained by performing emperical mode decomposition to strengthen the analysis on nonlinearity. The results obtained from bicoherency test resemble those obtained by performing DVV. An attempt to model the experimental observations by a second order nonlinear ordinary differential equation derived from the fluid equations of plasma has revealed convincing results.

In this paper, multifractal detrended fluctuation analysis (MF-DFA) has been used to analyze the floating potential fluctuations obtained with a Langmuir probe from a dc glow discharge magnetized plasma device. The generalized Hurst exponents ( h ( q ) ) , local fluctuation function ( F q ( s ) ) , the Renyi exponents ( τ ( q ) ) and the multifractal spectrum F ( α ) have been calculated by applying the MF-DFA method. The result of the MF-DFA shows the multifractal nature of these fluctuations. We have investigated the influence of magnetic field on the multifractal nature of the fluctuations and it is seen that degree of multifractality is reduced with the increase in the magnetic field strength. The values of h ( q ) have been restricted between 0.7 and 1 for the magnetized fluctuations. This result is evidence of the existence of long-range correlations in the fluctuations. Furthermore, we employed shuffle and surrogate approaches to analyze the origins of multifractality. Comparing the MF-DFA results for the data set to those for shuffled and surrogate series, we have found that its multifractal nature is due to the existence of significant long-term correlation.

In this work, we present an electronic implementation of a damped Korteweg-de Vries equation modeled as a third order nonlinear autonomous ordinary differential equation (jerk equation). The circuit has been realized using operational amplifiers, multipliers, and passive electronic components which provides the time series solution of the equation in agreement with the numerical simulation results. Using nonlinear time series analysis on the acquired waveform data, we have obtained different types of phase space portraits and further analysis reflected long range correlation in the chaotic time series. Important findings include hysteresis induced bifurcation and self-organized criticality behavior in the system which is mentioned in this work.

The double-curl Beltrami magnetic field in the presence of a uniform mean field is considered for investigating the nonlinear dynamical behavior of magnetic field lines. The solutions of the double-curl Beltrami equation being non-force-free in nature belong to a large class of physically interesting magnetic fields. A particular choice of solution for the double-curl equation in three dimensions leads to a wholly chaotic phase space. In the presence of a strong mean field, the phase space is a combination of closed magnetic surfaces and weakly chaotic regions that slowly tends to global randomness with a decreasing mean field. Stickiness is an important feature of the mixed phase space that describes the dynamical trapping of a chaotic trajectory at the border of regular regions. The global behavior of such trajectories is understood by computing the recurrence length statistics showing a long-tail distribution in contrast to a wholly chaotic phase space that supports a distribution which decays rapidly. Also, the transport characteristics of the field lines are analyzed in connection with their nonlinear dynamical properties.

Wavelet analysis is shown to be a more robust technique than previously used methods in the investigation of synchronization. The highlight of the technique is that it encompasses most of the information obtained by conventional methods into a single picture, while giving a deeper insight into the dynamics of the system. Order parameters derived from continuous wavelet transform coefficients are proposed, which can be used in the quantification of measure synchronization in Hamiltonian systems and identical synchronization in dissipative systems, irrespective of the nature of coupling, the nature of synchronization (complete or partial, quasiperiodic or chaotic), and the number of coupled subsystems.

Long range temporal correlation of the fluctuations in both the floating potential (ϕ f ) and the ion-saturation current (I s ) have been investigated in a radio frequency produced magnetized plasma, in which the magnetic field diverges from a narrower quartz tube into a bigger stainless steel expansion chamber. Both argon and helium have been used as the filling gases. The Hurst exponents estimated from the rescaled range statistics indicate that the fluctuations in the ion-saturation current in argon plasma are anti-correlated inside a conical surface. The same fluctuations exhibit a transition to long range correlated behaviour over a narrow radial region of the conical surface. For helium plasma, the fluctuations in I s are mostly long range anti-correlated. The log-log plot of the power spectra of the fluctuations in I s and ϕ f have been observed to follow power laws and the same happens in the power spectrum of the particle flux also, indicating that the self-organized-criticality may exist in the present system.

Measure Synchronization (MS) is the generalization of synchrony to Hamiltonian Systems. Partial measure synchronization (PMS) and complete measure synchronization in a system of three nonlinearly coupled one-dimensional oscillators have been investigated for different initial conditions on the basis of numerical computation. The system is governed by the classical SU(2) Yang-Mills-Higgs (YMH) Hamiltonian with three degrees of freedom. Various transitions in the quasiperiodic (QP) region, namely, QP unsynchronized to PMS, PMS to PMS, and PMS to chaos are identified through the average bare energies and interaction energies route maps as the coupling strength is varied. The transition from quasiperiodicity to chaos is seen to be associated with a gradual transition to complete chaotic measure synchronization (CMS) which is followed by chaotic unsynchronized states, the most stable state in this case. The analyses illustrate the dependence on initial conditions. The explanation of the behavior in the QP regime is sought from the power spectral analysis. The existence of PMS is confirmed using the order parameter M (here M α β for different combination pairs of oscillators), best suited to identify MS in coupled two-oscillator systems, and this definition is extended to obtain a new order parameter, M 3, aiding to distinguish complete MS of three oscillators from other forms of motion. The study of wavelet coefficient spectra sheds new light on the relative phase information of the oscillators in the QP PMS regions, also highlighting the intertwined role played by the various frequency components and their amplitudes as they vary temporally. Furthermore, this technique helps to draw a sharp distinction between CMS and chaotic unsynchronized states. Based on the Continuous Wavelet Transform coefficients of the three oscillators, an order parameter M w a v is defined to indicate the extent of synchronization of the various scales (frequencies) for different coupling strengths in the chaotic regime.Measure Synchronization (MS) is the generalization of synchrony to Hamiltonian Systems. Partial measure synchronization (PMS) and complete measure synchronization in a system of three nonlinearly coupled one-dimensional oscillators have been investigated for different initial conditions on the basis of numerical computation. The system is governed by the classical SU(2) Yang-Mills-Higgs (YMH) Hamiltonian with three degrees of freedom. Various transitions in the quasiperiodic (QP) region, namely, QP unsynchronized to PMS, PMS to PMS, and PMS to chaos are identified through the average bare energies and interaction energies route maps as the coupling strength is varied. The transition from quasiperiodicity to chaos is seen to be associated with a gradual transition to complete chaotic measure synchronization (CMS) which is followed by chaotic unsynchronized states, the most stable state in this case. The analyses illustrate the dependence on initial conditions. The explanation of the behavior in the QP regi...

A new, completely integrable, two dimensional evolution equation is derived for an ion acoustic wave propagating in a magnetized, collisionless plasma. The equation is a multidimensional generalization of a modulated wavepacket with weak transverse propagation, which has resemblance to nonlinear Schrodinger (NLS) equation and has a connection to Kadomtsev-Petviashvili equation through a constraint relation. Higher soliton solutions of the equation are derived through Hirota bili- nearization procedure, and an exact lump solution is calculated exhibiting 2D structure. Some mathe- matical properties demonstrating the completely integrable nature of this equation are described. Modulational instability using nonlinear frequency correction is derived, and the corresponding growth rate is calculated, which shows the directional asymmetry of the system. The discovery of this novel (2{\th}1) dimensional integrable NLS type equation for a magnetized plasma should pave a new direction of research in the field., Comment: 11 pages, 8 figures

The influence of viscosity gradient (via density) in an incompressible dusty plasma is analyzed. It is shown that for a well known dusty plasma model, the density dependence of viscosity leads to shear driven instability in a weakly coupled dusty plasma. The inhomogeneous viscous force coupled with density inhomogeneity in presence of velocity shear is responsible for this instability. For any finite value of shear flow parameter the viscous gradient force surpasses the viscous dissipation leading to instability.

This paper presents a comparative study on the investigation of coherent modes in chaotic time series data based on two techniques: the empirical mode decomposition and the discrete wavelet transform. We have applied these techniques to the different types of chaotic time series data obtained from a glow discharge plasma. The discrete wavelet transform and empirical mode decomposition analysis of the chaotic time series, combined with some simple statistical estimations like variance and correlation coefficient, helps in identifying the presence of coherent modes. We carried out a bicoherency analysis on the coherent modes extracted using empirical mode decomposition to detect the interactions amongst them. It is quite likely that the interactions between the different plasma modes are responsible for such turbulent nonlinear oscillations.

Regularity has always been attributed to periodicity. However, there has been a spurt of interest in another unique type of regularity called anitperiodicity. In this paper we have presented results of antiperiodic oscillations obtained from a forced duffing equation with negative linear stiffness wherein the increase in the number of peaks in anti periodic oscillation with the forcing strength has been observed. Similarity function has been used to identify the antiperiodic oscillation and further the bifurcation diagram has been plotted and stability analysis of the fixed points have been carried out to understand its dynamics. An analog electronic circuit governed by the forced Duffing equation has been designed and developed to investigate the dynamics of the antiperiodic oscillations. The circuit is quite robust and stable to enable the comparison of its analog output with the numerically simulated data. Power spectrum analysis obtained by fast Fourier transform has been corroborated using a nonlinear statistical technique called rescale range analysis method. By this technique we have estimated the Hurst exponents and detected the coherent frequencies present in the system. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Measure Synchronization is a general term used for weak synchronization in Hamiltonian systems. Route to measure synchronization in a system of two non-linearly coupled one-dimensional oscillators, the potential of which is represented by the Pullen-Edmonds Potential is investigated on the basis of numerical computation. Transitions to measure synchronization and unsynchronization, both quasiperiodic and chaotic, are investigated and distinguished on the basis of the variation of average bare energies, average interaction energy, root-mean-square value of oscillations, phase difference, and frequencies with the coupling strength. A suitable order parameter to identify and characterize both quasiperiodic and chaotic measure synchronous states is sought, and drawbacks of the various order parameters, suggested previously, are discussed.

We have carried out a detailed study of scaling region using detrended fractal analysis test by applying different forcing likewise noise, sinusoidal, square on the floating potential fluctuations acquired under different pressures in a DC glow discharge plasma. The transition in the dynamics is observed through recurrence plot techniques which is an efficient method to observe the critical regime transitions in dynamics. The complexity of the nonlinear fluctuation has been revealed with the help of recurrence quantification analysis which is a suitable tool for investigating recurrence, an ubiquitous feature providing a deep insight into the dynamics of real dynamical system. An informal test for stationarity which checks for the compatibility of nonlinear approximations to the dynamics made in different segments in a time series has been proposed. In case of sinusoidal, noise, square forcing applied on fluctuation acquired at P=0.12mbar only one dominant scaling region is observed whereas the forcing applied on fluctuation (P=0.004mbar) two prominent scaling regions have been explored reliably using different forcing amplitudes indicating the signature of crossover phenomena. Furthermore a persistence long range behaviour has been observed in one of these scaling regions. A comprehensive study of the quantifi- cation of scaling exponents has been carried out with the increase in amplitude and frequency of sinusoidal, square type of forcings. The scalings exponent is envisaged to be the roughness of the time series. The method provides a single quantitative idea of the scaling exponent to quantify the correlation properties of a signal., 17 pages, 12 figures, 2tables. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:chao-dyn/9909044 by other authors

Recurrence quantification analysis (RQA) is used to study dynamical systems and to identify the underlying physics when a system exhibits a transition due to changes in some control parameter. The tendency of reoccurrence of different states after certain interval reflects and reveals the hidden patterns of a complex time series data. The present work involves the study of the floating potential fluctuations of a glow discharge plasma obtained by using a Langmuir probe. Determinism, entropy and Lmax are important measures of RQA that show an increasing and decreasing trend with variation in the values of discharge voltages and indicate an order-chaos transition in the dynamics of the fluctuations. Statistical analysis techniques represented by skewness and kurtosis are also supportive of a similar phenomenon occurring in the system.

Space satellite observations show that current sheets in the space plasma environment are often characterized by bifurcated structures. In a recent paper a two-fluid model of the bifurcated current sheet was constructed on the basis of the pseudo potential method. A straightforward generalization of Janaki et al.'s two-fluid model to kinetic formalism, however, leads to an unphysical situation of negative particle velocity distribution function occurring over a certain range of velocity space. If one assumes an isotropic background plasma population, however, one can show that a rigorous, physically valid kinetic solution of the bifurcated current sheet can be obtained.

The transport of magnetic field lines is investigated numerically by considering a static magnetic fluctuation with a uniform background field in which the fluctuating part is obtained as a particular solution of the double curl equation and is non force-free in nature. It is found that the transport of magnetic field lines is anomalous, in fact, subdiffusion for lower fluctuation level, δ B ∕ B 0 , relative to the mean field. The situation corresponds to weak chaos and closed magnetic surfaces in the phase space. Stochasticity increases by increasing the fluctuation level. Higher fluctuation levels with δ B ∕ B 0 > 1 lead to global stochasticity and almost normal diffusion. These results for transport characteristics are supported by analyzing the kurtosis of the displacement distribution of the chaotic field lines. A mixed phase space leads to non-Gaussian structure of the displacement probability distribution for the chaotic trajectories, whereas a wholly chaotic phase space supports nearly Gaussian distribution.

The possibility of finding chaos in a KdV like system in the absence of any external forcing is explored without reducing its order by treating it as a third order Jerk equation. While bounded solutions with periodic nature exist for both right and left traveling wave solutions of the KdV equation, inclusion of terms that signify damping lead to chaotic behavior only for left moving waves. The bifurcation diagram obtained for suitable choice of the parameters shows interesting phenomena such as Hopf and period doubling bifurcations. To characterize the chaotic behavior, the spectrum of Lyapunov exponent is studied. Domains of stable and unstable solutions with the boundaries marking transitions have been identified in the parameter space.

The characteristics of longitudinal dust acoustic wave (DAW) in presence of velocity shear have been investigated in a strongly coupled dusty plasma using the generalized hydrodynamic (GH) model. In the hydrodynamic regime (ωτ m ≪1), i.e. when characteristic time τ m is slower than inverse of wave frequency, the viscosity in the GH model plays the usual role of wave damping, whereas in the kinetic regime (ωτ m ≫1), i.e. when characteristic time τ m is larger than inverse of wave frequency, viscosity shows energy storing property in the wave. In the kinetic regime, we have studied the longitudinal mode $\omega^{2}=k^{2} (c_{d}^{2}+c_{l}^{2})$ (where ω is the frequency, k is the wave number, c d is the dust acoustic velocity and c l is the longitudinal velocity that arises due to viscosity) in presence of velocity shear. It is shown that velocity shear can destabilize this mode. Both nonmodal and modal techniques are employed to demonstrate the growth rate of the instability.

Plasma being a nonlinear and complex system, is capable of sustaining a wide spectrum of waves, oscillations and instabilities. These fluctuations interact nonlinearly amongst themselves and also with particles: electrons/ions and thus lead to nonlinear wave-wave or wave-particle interaction. In the presence of coherent waves the particles are accelerated whereas irregular oscillations can give rise to particle heating which is also called stochastic heating. Particle orbits are known to be randomized by the wave fields such that their motion can also become stochastic. For fusion to be sustained one needs a very high temperature plasma for an extended duration. It quite common to deploy external waves like electron cyclotron waves or ion cyclotron waves for plasma heating and current drive. These external waves also work only in certain regimes. Conventional plasma techniques have been able to answer several of the observations of the above processes related to heating transport etc, but nonlinear dynamics as a tool has helped in comprehending the plasma oscillations better. We have for the first time obtained a Third Order nonlinear ordinary differential equation (TONLODE) also known as jerk equation to describe the electrostatic ion cyclotron plasma oscillations in a magnetic field. The interesting feature of this equation is that it does not require an external forcing term to obtain chaotic behaviour.

The nonlinear propagation of low frequency waves, in a collisionless, strongly coupled dusty plasma (SCDP) with a density dependent viscosity, has been studied with a proper Galilean invariant generalized hydrodynamic (GH) model. The well known reductive perturbation technique (RPT) has been employed in obtaining the solutions of the longitudinal and transverse perturbations. It has been found that the nonlinear propagation of the acoustic perturbations govern with the modified Korteweg-de Vries (KdV) equation and are decoupled from the sheared fluctuations. In the regions, where transversal gradients of the flow exists, coupling between the longitudinal and transverse perturbations occurs due to convective nonlinearity which is true for the homogeneous case also. The results, obtained here, can have relative significance to astrophysical context as well as in laboratory plasmas.

Single and double curl Beltrami magnetic fields are studied numerically in connection with their transport properties, and the results are compared and analyzed by characterizing the magnetic field lines. In the phase space of the single curl Beltrami field, islands of regular field lines are embedded into the chaotic sea, whereas the field lines for certain solutions of the double curl Beltrami field are chaotic over the entire space. Due to the presence of regular islands in phase space, the chaotic trajectories show stickiness phenomena which are characterized by the distribution of a chaotic field line. The dynamical traps in chaotic orbits due to stickiness phenomena are also characterized by the distribution of finite distance Lyapunov exponents. Finally, the recurrence length distribution of chaotic trajectories is plotted to understand their global behaviour.

Dodecanethiol-capped gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) are self-organized in two different amphiphilic monolayers one of which is a single-tailed fatty acid Stearic acid (StA) and the other a double-tailed lipid 1,2-dimyristoyl-sn-glycero-3-phosphocholine (DMPC). In the StA-AuNP film the AuNPs self-organize to form an interconnected network of nanoclusters on compression while in the DMPC-AuNP film the AuNPs aggregate to form random, isolated clusters in the film. The long time evolution of the films at constant surface pressure reveals ring structures in the former and diffusion limited aggregates in the latter that with time evolve into an irregular porous maze of AuNPs in the DMPC film. The difference in structure of the AuNP patterns in the two films can be attributed to a difference in the lipophilic interactions between the NPs and the amphiphilic molecules. The mean square intensity fluctuations f(ln) calculated along a typical line for the 2D structures in both the films at initial and final stages of lo...

In this work the principle of minimum dissipation rate is applied to an externally driven two-fluid plasma. The definition of generalized helicity has been modified to a gauge invariant form to incorporate open systems. The relaxed state is represented by a double-curl equation and supports nonzero flow. In the limit of vanishingly small dissipation, the equation is shown to retain the double-curl form that represents a steady state configuration supported by a two-fluid plasma.

For a non-relativistic electron–positron plasma the possibility of obtaining a relaxed state is explored. The Euler–Lagrange equations are obtained by minimizing the hyper-resistivity with generalized helicities and magnetofluid energy as the constraints. The relaxed state is shown to be morphologically similar to the steady-state equilibria of the electron–positron plasma system.

The nonstationary and nonlinear dust-acoustic wave is considered in the framework of the Lagrangian fluid description. A single nonlinear equation and its solutions are obtained for dust-acoustic waves with nontrivial space and time dependence in both the large and small amplitude limit. In the absence of linear dispersion solutions in the large amplitude limit, it is demonstrated that under well-defined initial and boundary conditions the amplitude of the solutions is decreasing and the spatial profile spreads. This is a new class of nonlinear solutions leading to short-lived nonlinear structures. In the small amplitude limit, the soliton-like solution indicates close association with Korteweg–de Vries solitons.

The relaxation phenomenon for a driven plasma system is studied using minimum dissipation rate principle. For the class of equilibria supporting field-aligned flows the Euler–Lagrange equations are shown to support bifurcated solutions. One of the branches depicts the topology of the field reversed configuration sustaining flow whereas the other branch resembles the classical spheromak configuration.

In a fluid description large amplitude electrostatic ion-acoustic waves have been studied in an unmagnetized plasma using Lagrangian variables. We obtained solutions for ion-acoustic waves with nontrivial space and time dependence. The non-dispersive solutions demonstrate that under well defined initial and boundary conditions the amplitude of the solutions decreases indicating a new class of nonlinear solutions that lead to short lived structures.

The performed magnetohydrodynamic simulations aim to assess the influence of chaotic magnetic field lines on spontaneous generation of current sheets in an evolving viscous magnetofluid with infinite electrical conductivity. Suitable non-force-free initial fields having chaotic magnetic field lines are constructed by superposing two Arnold-Beltrami-Childress magnetic fields. The construction is such that the superposed field is devoid of any three or two-dimensional magnetic nulls, which are potential sites of current sheet development. Consequently, the notion of spontaneity can be attributed to any current sheet generated by the evolving magnetofluid. Moreover, to ensure the development to be spontaneous, the simulations are performed in congruence with Parker's magnetostatic theorem which necessitates an attainment of a terminal quasi-steady state and maintenance of flux-freezing to high fidelity. Importantly, the paper establishes spontaneous onset of volume distributed current sheets to be positively...

A localized glowing, fireball like structure, appears near the cathode surface of a glow discharge plasma device when it is subjected to a magnetic dipole field produced by a bar magnet placed outside the plasma chamber. It is seen that the plasma density in the localized glow region and the luminous intensity of this structure increases with the increase in the magnetic field strength. The effect of such localized glow region on the plasma floating potential fluctuation dynamics is investigated. Floating potential fluctuations show that the emergence of such localized structure leads the system towards nonlinear dynamical regimes. Increasing the magnetic field strength reveals a transition from order to chaos via period doubling bifurcation. This transition is analyzed by using bifurcation diagram, phase space plots, power spectrum plots, Hilbert Huang transform, and by estimating the largest Lyapunov exponent. The interaction of plasma with a dipole magnetic field produces a non-monotonic potential stru...

The dynamics of charged particles is studied in stationary magnetic fields that are obtained as solutions of nonlinear coupled equations varying in one dimension. The chosen equation can give both regular and chaotic solutions depending on the chosen coupling parameter. For chaotic numerical solution of the equation, rms values of fluctuation are increased by changing the coupling parameter, whereas for regular analytical solution, rms values of fluctuation are increased by changing the amplitude of fluctuation. Energy gain of an ensemble of particles is studied in both cases in the presence of a uniform electric field. Ensemble averaged energy gain is shown to decrease with the increase in rms values of fluctuation in the first case and increase with the increase in rms values of fluctuation in the second case.

We propose an alternative way for managing near shore surging waves, including extreme waves like tsunamis, going beyond the conventional passive measures like the warning system. We study theoretically the possibility of influencing the nonlinear surface waves through a leakage boundary effect at the bottom. It has been found through analytic result, that the controlled leakage at the bottom might regulate the amplitude of the surface solitary waves. This could lead to a possible decay of the surging waves to reduce its hazardous effects near the shore. Our theoretical results are estimated by applying it to a real coastal bathymetry of the Bay of Bengal in India.

Self-excited dual upper drift modes have been observed in a magnetized helium plasma, having frequencies less than the ion cyclotron frequency (fci) but higher than that of the conventional low frequency drift waves ( f≪fci). The modes propagate mainly in the azimuthal direction with mode numbers m = 1 and m = 2 with frequencies 30 kHz and 50 kHz, respectively, and also have weak axial propagation. They coexist over a wide range of radial and axial locations and the direction of azimuthal propagation coincides with the electron diamagnetic drift. A local dispersion relation obtained from the fluid description of the plasma predicts an instability simultaneously for both m = 1 and m = 2 modes (with different frequencies) over a range of radial locations.

Experimental evidence of intrinsic noise induced coherence resonance in a glow discharge plasma is being reported. Initially the system is started at a discharge voltage (DV) where it exhibited fixed point dynamics, and then with the subsequent increase in the DV spikes were excited which were few in number and with further increase of DV the number of spikes as well as their regularity increased. The regularity in the interspike interval of the spikes is estimated using normalized variance. Coherence resonance was determined using normalized variance curve and also corroborated by Hurst exponent and power spectrum plots. We show that the regularity of the excitable spikes in the floating potential fluctuation increases with the increase in the DV, up to a particular value of DV. Using a Wiener filter, we separated the noise component which was observed to increase with DV and hence conjectured that noise can play an important role in the generation of the coherence resonance. From an anharmonic oscillator equation describing ion acoustic oscillations, we have been able to obtain a FitzHugh-Nagumo like model which has been used to understand the excitable dynamics of glow discharge plasma in the presence of noise. The numerical results agree quite well with the experimental results.

A mixture of dodecanethiol-capped Au nanoparticles (AuNPs) and the amphiphilic fatty acid, stearic acid, spread as a monomolecular layer on water surface, is observed with Brewster angle microscopy (BAM) to form a two-dimensional network of AuNP clusters through demixing, at concentration of AuNPs by weight (ρ[over ¯])>10% and the surface pressure (π)≥10mNm^{-1}. For π=15mNm^{-1}, the number of nodes (n) remains unchanged till ∼2 hours and then changes over to a lower n state, where the pattern consists of almost perfect circles with greater in-plane thickness of the AuNP lamellae. For the higher n state the mean-square fluctuation of BAM intensity remains flat and then decays as f(ξ)=ξ^{2α} with α∼0.6 (correlated fluctuations) over the length scales of 400μm-6μm and below 6μm, respectively. For the lower n state the fluctuation decays almost over the entire length scale with α=0.3, indicating emergence of aperiodicity from quasiperiodicity and a changeover to anticorrelated fluctuations. These patterns can be looked at as two distinct chaotic trajectories in the I-I^{'} phase space of the system (I being the scattered light intensity at any position of the pattern and I^{'} its gradient) with characteristic Lyapunov exponents.

A forced Korteweg-de Vries (KdV) equation is derived to describe weakly nonlinear, shallow-water surface wave propagation over nontrivial bottom boundary condition. We show that different functional forms of bottom boundary conditions self-consistently produce different forced KdV equations as the evolution equations for the free surface. Solitary wave solutions have been analytically obtained where phase gets modulated controlled by bottom boundary condition, whereas amplitude remains constant.

A simple method has been introduced to furnish the equilibrium solution of the Wigner equation for all order of the quantum correction. This process builds up a recursion relation involving the coefficients of the different power of the velocity. The technique greatly relies upon the proper guess work of the trial solution and is different from the Wigner s original work. The solution is in a compact exponential form with a polynomial of velocity in the argument and returns the Wigner s form when expansion of the exponential factor is carried out. The study keeps its importance in studying various close as well as open quantum mechanical system. In addition, this solution may be employed to obtain the non equilibrium one particle wigner distribution in the relaxation-time approximation and under near-equilibrium conditions.

Stationary solutions of Vlasov-Maxwell equations are obtained by exploiting the invariants of single particle motion leading to linear or nonlinear functional relations between current and vector potential. For a specific combination of invariants, it is shown that Vlasov-Maxwell equilibria have an associated Hamiltonian that exhibits chaos.

In strongly coupled limit the general hydrodynamic (GH) model shows that the dusty plasma, acquiring significant rigidity, is able to support the "shear" like mode [P. K. Kaw and A. Sen, Phys. Plasmas 5, 3552 (1998)]. In presence of velocity shear, this shear like mode is coupled with the dust acoustic mode which is generated by the compressibility effect of the dust fluid due to the finite temperature of the dust, electron and ion fluids. Local dispersion shows the velocity shear is also responsible for the instabilities of the shear mode, acoustic mode, as well as the shear-acoustic coupled mode. The present work, carried out in GH visco-elastic formalism, also gives the clear insight of the instabilities of the coupled mode in non local regime with a hyperbolic tangent velocity shear profile over a finite width.

The field-reversed configuration (FRC) with a completely null toroidal field and finite plasma beta is shown to result from a relaxation mechanism based on the principle of minimum dissipation of energy.

The principle of minimum energy dissipation rate is utilized to develop a unified model for relaxation in toroidal discharges. The Euler–Lagrange equation for such relaxed states is solved in toroidal coordinates for an axisymmetric torus by expressing the solutions in terms of Chandrasekhar–Kendall (C–K) eigenfunctions analytically continued in the complex domain. The C–K eigenfunctions are hypergeometric functions that are solutions of the scalar Helmholtz equation in toroidal coordinates in the large-aspect-ratio approximation. Equilibria are constructed by assuming the total current J=0 at the edge. This yields the eigenvalues for a given aspect-ratio. The most novel feature of the present model is that solutions allow for tokamak, low-q as well as reversed field pinch-like behavior with a change in the eigenvalue characterizing the relaxed state.

Linear dispersion relations of low-frequency electrostatic dust-Bernstein modes have been derived by employing the Vlasov equation for the motions of electrons, ions, and dust particles in a uniformly magnetized dusty plasma. Because of the large mass of the dust grains, the finite Larmor radius effects become significant for dust dynamics giving rise to the existence of extreme low-frequency dust-Bernstein modes. The importance of these low-frequency electrostatic dust-modes on the dust-coagulation and dust-crystallization has also been pointed out.

An analysis of nonlinear transverse shear wave has been carried out on non-Newtonian viscoelastic liquid using generalized hydrodynamic(GH) model. The nonlinear viscoelastic behavior is introduced through velocity shear dependence of viscosity coefficient by well known Carreau -Bird model. The dynamical feature of this shear wave leads to the celebrated Fermi-Pasta-Ulam (FPU) problem. Numerical solution has been obtained which shows that initial periodic solutions reoccur after passing through several patterns of periodic waves. A possible explanation for this periodic solution is given by constructing modified Korteweg de Vries (mKdV) equation. This model has application from laboratory to astrophysical plasmas as well as biological systems., 5 pages, 2 figures

The well known Jeans instability is studied for a viscoelastic, gravitational fluid using generalized hydrodynamic equations of motions. It is found that the threshold for the onset of instability appears at higher wavelengths in a viscoelastic medium. Elastic effects playing a role similar to thermal pressure are found to lower the growth rate of the gravitational instability. Such features may manifest themselves in matter constituting dense astrophysical objects., 10 pages, 4 figures

The Kelvin-Helmholtz (KH) instability is studied in a non-Newtonian dusty plasma with an experimentally verified model [Phys. Rev. Lett. {\bf 98}, 145003 (2007)] of shear flow rate dependent viscosity. The shear flow profile used here is a parabolic type bounded flow. Both the shear thinning and shear thickening properties are investigated in compressible as well as incompressible limits using a linear stability analysis. Like the stabilizing effect of compressibility on the KH instability, the non-Newtonian effect in shear thickening regime could also suppress the instability but on the contrary, shear thinning property enhances it. A detailed study is reported on the role of non-Newtonian effect on KH instability with conventional dust fluid equations using standard eigenvalue analysis., Comment: 13 pages, 4 figures