An evidence of period doubling bifurcation in a dc driven semiconductor-gas discharge plasma

We present an experimental study of nonlinearity observed in a dc driven semiconductor-gas discharge system. The plasma glow is generated using planar electrodes in a vacuum chamber filled with nitrogen gas at partial atmospheric pressure. The discharge behaves oscillatory in time, showing single and sometimes multiple periodicities in plasma current and voltage measurements. Harmonic frequency generations and period doubling cascade are investigated experimentally by varying the applied voltage. To identify the stability condition, numerical simulations are conducted using COMSOL® Multiphysics software. The discharge is modeled as a one dimensional plasma slab. Numerical results are in good agreement with the experimental measurements.