Natalia B. Janson

Three distinct modes in a cold atmospheric pressure plasma jet

Cold atmospheric pressure helium plasma jets are increasingly used in many processing applications, due to a distinct combination of their inherent plasma stability with excellent reaction chemistry often enhanced downstream. Despite their widespread usage, it remains largely unknown whether cold atmospheric plasma jets maintain similar characteristics from breakdown to arcing or whether they possess different operating modes. In addition to their known ability to produce a fast moving train of discrete luminous clusters along the jet length, commonly known as plasma bullets, this paper reports evidence of two additional modes of operation, namely a chaotic mode and a continuous mode in an atmospheric helium plasma jet. Through detailed electrical and optical characterization, it is shown that immediately following breakdown the plasma jet operates in a deterministic chaotic mode. With increasing input power, the discharge becomes periodic and the jet plasma is found to produce at least one strong plasma bullet every cycle of the applied voltage. Further increase in input power eventually leads to the continuous mode in which excited species are seen to remain within the inter-electrode space throughout the entire cycle of the applied voltage. Transition from the chaotic, through the bullet, to the continuous modes is abrupt and distinct, with each mode having a unique set of operating characteristics. For the bullet mode, direct evidence is presented to demonstrate that the evolution of the plasma jet involves a repeated sequence of generation, collapse and regeneration of the plasma head occurring at locations progressively towards the instantaneous cathode. These offer previously unavailable insight into plasma jet formation mechanisms and the potential of matching plasma jet modes to specific needs of a given processing application.

Delayed Feedback as a Means of Control of Noise-Induced Motion

Time-delayed feedback is exploited for controlling noise-induced motion in coherence resonance oscillators. Namely, under the proper choice of time delay, one can either increase or decrease the regularity of motion. It is shown that in an excitable system, delayed feedback can stabilize the frequency of oscillations against variation of noise strength. Also, for fixed noise intensity, the phenomenon of entrainment of the basic oscillation period by the delayed feedback occurs. This allows one to steer the time scales of noise-induced motion by changing the time delay.

Bifurcation analysis of a neutral delay differential equation modelling the torsional motion of a driven drill-string

Using techniques from dynamical systems analysis we explore numerically the solution space, under parametric variation, of a neutral differential delay equation that arises naturally in the Cosserat description of torsional waves on a driven drill-string.

ENTRAINMENT BETWEEN HEART RATE AND WEAK NONINVASIVE FORCING

We demonstrate that the heart rate of a healthy human can be synchronized by means of weak external noninvasive forcing in the form of a sequence of sound and light pulses, being either periodic or aperiodic, the latter forcing given by interbeat intervals of the heart of another subject. The phenomenon of phase locking of n:m type is observed for both situations in about 90% of our experiments. The plot for the ratio of forcing frequency to the average frequency of response versus detuning possesses a plateau and is in agreement with classical synchronization theory.

CONTROLLING STOCHASTIC OSCILLATIONS CLOSE TO A HOPF BIFURCATION BY TIME-DELAYED FEEDBACK

We study the effect of a time-delayed feedback upon a Van der Pol oscillator under the influence of white noise in the regime below the Hopf bifurcation where the deterministic system has a stable fixed point. We show that both the coherence and the frequency of the noise-induced oscillations can be controlled by varying the delay time and the strength of the control force. Approximate analytical expressions for the power spectral density and the coherence properties of the stochastic delay differential equation are developed, and are in good agreement with our numerical simulations. Our analytical results elucidate how the correlation time of the controlled stochastic oscillations can be maximized as a function of delay and feedback strength.

Self-stabilization of high frequency oscillations in semiconductor superlattices by time-delay autosynchronization

We present a scheme to stabilize high-frequency domain oscillations in semiconductor superlattices by a time-delayed feedback loop. Applying concepts from chaos control theory we propose to control the spatiotemporal dynamics of fronts of accumulation and depletion layers which are generated at the emitter and may collide and annihilate during their transit, and thereby suppress chaos. The proposed method only requires the feedback of internal global electrical variables, viz., current and voltage, which makes the practical implementation very easy.

Chaos in atmospheric-pressure plasma jets

We report detailed characterization of a low-temperature atmospheric-pressure plasma jet that exhibits regimes of periodic, quasi-periodic and chaotic behaviors. Power spectra, phase portraits, stroboscopic section and bifurcation diagram of the discharge current combine to comprehensively demonstrate the existence of chaos, and this evidence is strengthened with a nonlinear dynamics analysis using two control parameters that maps out periodic, period-multiplication, and chaotic regimes over a wide range of the input voltage and gas flow rate. In addition, optical emission signatures of excited plasma species are used as the second and independent observable to demonstrate the presence of chaos and period-doubling in both the concentrations and composition of plasma species, suggesting a similar array of periodic, quasi-periodic and chaotic regimes in plasma chemistry. The presence of quasi-periodic and chaotic regimes in structurally unbounded low-temperature atmospheric plasmas not only is important as a fundamental scientific topic but also has interesting implications for their numerous applications. Chaos may be undesirable for industrial applications where cycle-to-cycle reproducibility is important, yet for treatment of cell-containing materials including living tissues it may offer a novel route to combat some of the major challenges in medicine such as drug resistance. Chaos in low-temperature atmospheric plasmas and its effective control are likely to open up new vistas for medical technologies.

Diagnostic of cardio-vascular disease with help of largest Lyapunov exponent of RR-sequences

Abstract We suggest to present a discrete sequence of cardiointervals in the form of a smooth time dependence and for the given time series compute the largest Lyapunov exponent. Processing the database with RR-intervals of patients suffering from coronary artery disease (CAD) has shown that the largest Lyapunov exponent can be a diagnostic criteria allowing one to distinguish between different groups of patients with more confidence than the standard methods for time series processing accepted in cardiology.

Spiking computation and stochastic amplification in a neuron-like semiconductor microstructure

We have demonstrated the proof of principle of a semiconductor neuron, which has dendrites, axon, and a soma and computes information encoded in electrical pulses in the same way as biological neurons. Electrical impulses applied to dendrites diffuse along microwires to the soma. The soma is the active part of the neuron, which regenerates input pulses above a voltage threshold and transmits them into the axon. Our concept of neuron is a major step forward because its spatial structure controls the timing of pulses, which arrive at the soma. Dendrites and axon act as transmission delay lines, which modify the information, coded in the timing of pulses. We have finally shown that noise enhances the detection sensitivity of the neuron by helping the transmission of weak periodic signals. A maximum enhancement of signal transmission was observed at an optimum noise level known as stochastic resonance. The experimental results are in excellent agreement with simulations of the FitzHugh-Nagumo model. Our neuron is therefore extremely well suited to providing feedback on the various mathematical approximations of neurons and building functional networks.

Non-linear dynamics of biological systems

All biological systems can be classified as open, dissipative and non-linear. This review introduces the most typical phenomena associated with non-linearity, dissipation and openness in biological systems. Namely, damped oscillations, self-oscillations, synchronisation, chaotic and noise-induced oscillations are explained, and illustrated by examples from various biological systems. The link is made between the experimentally registered activities and their mathematical counterparts with the help of the qualitative theory of ordinary differential equations. We introduce the ideas of non-linear and oscillatory thinking proposed by Mandelstam in the 1930s, and show how they can be applied to biological systems. An emphasis is made on the intuitive explanation of mathematical concepts rather than mathematical rigour.