Complex quasiperiodic and chaotic states observed in thermally induced oscillations of gas columns

Highly nonlinear phenomena are observed in Taconis oscillations which are spontaneous oscillations of gas columns thermally induced in a tube with steep temperature gradients. Near the overlapped region and the intersection of the stability curves for two different modes with incommensurate frequencies, we find that both modes can be excited simultaneously and competition between them leads to complex quasiperiodic and chaotic states. Experimental data are anlayzed by use of recent methods from the theory of nonlinear dynamical systems.