Hysteresis of fluctuation dynamics associated with a fireball in a magnetized glow discharge plasma in a currentless toroidal assembly

Floating potential fluctuations associated with an anode fireball in a glow discharge plasma in the toroidal vacuum vessel of the SINP tokamak are found to exhibit different kinds of oscillations under the action of vertical magnetic field of different strengths. While increasing the vertical magnetic field, the fluctuations have shown transitions as: chaotic oscillation → inverse homoclinic transition → intermittency → chaotic oscillation. However, on decreasing the magnetic field, the fluctuations are seen to follow: chaotic oscillations → homoclinic transition → chaotic oscillation; that is the intermittent feature is not observed. Fireball dynamics is found to be closely related to the magnetic field applied; results of visual inspection with a high speed camera are in close agreement with the fluctuations, and the fireball dynamics is found to be closely related to the transitions. The statistical properties like skewness, kurtosis, and entropy of the fluctuations are also found to exhibit this hysteresis behaviour.