English

Interaction of streamers in air and other oxygen-nitrogen mixtures

Plasma Physics 2008-08-19 v2 Atmospheric and Oceanic Physics Fluid Dynamics

Abstract

The interaction of streamers in nitrogen-oxygen mixtures such as air is studied. First, an efficient method for fully three-dimensional streamer simulations in multiprocessor machines is introduced. With its help, we find two competing mechanisms how two adjacent streamers can interact: through electrostatic repulsion and through attraction due to nonlocal photo-ionization. The non-intuitive effects of pressure and of the nitrogen-oxygen ratio are discussed. As photo-ionization is experimentally difficult to access, we finally suggest to measure it indirectly through streamer interactions.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.0712.2774,
  title  = {Interaction of streamers in air and other oxygen-nitrogen mixtures},
  author = {A. Luque and U. Ebert and W. Hundsdorfer},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0712.2774},
  year   = {2008}
}

Comments

4 pages, 4 figures