title: Period doubling cascade in glow discharges: local versus global differential conductivity.
abstract: Short planar glow discharges coupled to a resistive layer exhibit a wealth of spontaneous spatiotemporal patterns. Due to similarities with other pattern forming systems that are described by reaction-diffusion models, several authors have tried to derive such models from discharge physics. We investigate the temporal oscillations of the discharge system and find a cascade of period doubling events. This shows that the inner structure of the discharge is more complex than can be described by a two-component reaction-diffusion-model with negative differential conductivity. We also derive an alternative reduced model.
authors.affiliation: CWI, P.O. Box 94079, 1090 GB Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
authors.forename: Danijela D
authors.initials: DD
authors.lastname: Sijacić
authors.forename: Ute
authors.initials: U
authors.lastname: Ebert
authors.forename: Ismail
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Rafatov