Noise-covered drift bifurcation of dissipative solitons in a planar gas-discharge system

The trajectories of propagating self-organized, well-localized solitary patterns (dissipative solitons) in the form of electrical current filaments are experimentally investigated in a planar quasi-two-dimensional dc gas-discharge system with high Ohmic semiconductor barrier. Earlier phenomenological models qualitatively describing the experimental observations in terms of a particle model predict a transition from stationary filaments to filaments traveling with constant finite speed due to an appropriate change of the system parameters. This prediction motivates a search for a drift bifurcation in the experimental system, but a direct comparison of experimentally recorded trajectories with theoretical predictions is impossible due to the strong influence of noise. To solve this problem, the filament dynamics is modeled using an appropriate Langevin equation, allowing for the application of a stochastic data analysis technique to separate deterministic and stochastic parts of the dynamics. Simulations carried out with the particle model demonstrate the efficiency of the method. Applying the technique to the experimentally recorded trajectories yields good agreement with the predictions of the model equations. Finally, the predicted drift bifurcation is found using the semiconductor resistivity as control parameter. In the resulting bifurcation diagram, the square of the equilibrium velocity scales linearly with the control parameter.