Chaotic behavior and fractals discovered in the time evolution of discharge current at atmospheric pressure

Abstract

In this study, nonlinear behaviors in the time evolution of discharge current at atmospheric pressure are investigated from the viewpoints of chaos and fractals. When the electric field between two electrodes placed in atmospheric pressure increases and exceeds a certain value, the insulation breakdown of air and corona discharge occur. With the further increase in the electric field, the corona discharge gradually transforms into an arc discharge along with the increasing discharge current. It is found from the chaotic analysis results of the calculation of the largest Lyapunov exponents that the system sustains more chaos in the corona than the arc discharge, i.e., the system is stabilized with the system changing from a corona to arc discharge. The correlation dimension of the time evolution of the discharge current saturates at a non-integer value at every discharge current, and 1f-type spectra are observed in the power spectrum, i.e., the system exhibits fractal properties.