Quasiperiodic transition to spatiotemporal chaos in weakly ionized magnetoplasmas

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Abstract
The transition to temporal and then spatiotemporal chaos in a weakly ionized magnetoplasma system which supports nonlinear flute-type ionization-drift waves was studied. The system is similar to a reaction-diffusion system with additional drift-induced transverse spatial coupling. It follows a complex quasiperiodic route with strong nonlinear mode-mode competition, a narrow frequency-locking interval, and an unstable third independent frequency to temporal chaos. At the onset of the spatial chaos, the discrete spatiotemporal modes decrease down to the noise floor, the temporal correlation reduces more than ten times, and the correlation dimension jumps from less than 8 to greater than 12.