Low dimensional chaos in ion sheath dynamics

Dynamics of externally driven ion sheath in the double plasma device has be en investigated by numerically solving a nonlinear differential equation. T he global dynamical changes of the system have been examined by evaluating parametric changes of the Poincare map and the maximum Lyapunov exponent. T he transitions to chaos caused by the cascade bifurcation and intermittency are clearly shown by graphical methods. The correlation dimension calculat ed for a strange attractor, D-2 similar to 1.54, agrees well with the exper imental one indicates that the chaos is low dimensional, and the system can be described by the low dimensional equation.