Related papers: Electron density fluctuations accelerate the branc…
Streamer discharges are the primary mode of electric breakdown of air in lightning and high voltage technology. Streamer channels branch many times, which determines the developing tree-like discharge structure. Understanding these branched…
Positive streamer discharges require a source of free electrons ahead of them for their growth. In air, these electrons are typically provided by photoionization. Here we investigate how stochastic fluctuations due to the discreteness of…
Streamer discharges are thin plasma channels that precede lightning and sparks. They usually evolve in bundles as stochastic tree-like structures and are inherently difficult to model due to their multiscale nature. In this paper, we…
This proceedings paper from 2004 contains figures of discharges in different gap lengths at the same potential that are not available elsewhere. The 2004 abstract: The evolution of streamers is known to depend on gas composition and…
We investigate the branching of positive streamers in air and present the first systematic investigation of splitting into more than two branches. We study discharges in 100 mbar artificial air that is exposed to voltage pulses of 10 kV…
The pattern of branched electron flow revealed by scanning gate microscopy shows the distribution of ballistic electron trajectories. The details of the pattern are determined by the correlated potential of remote dopants with an amplitude…
We develop an axial model for single steadily propagating positive streamers in air. It uses observable parameters to estimate quantities that are difficult to measure. More specifically, for given velocity, radius, length and applied…
It is by now well understood that large sprite discharges at the low air densities of the mesosphere are physically similar to small streamer discharges in air at standard temperature and pressure. This similarity is based on Townsend…
We study the effect of an inhomogeneous gas density on positive streamer discharges in air using a 3D fluid model with stochastic photoionization, generalizing earlier work with a 2D axisymmetric model by Starikovskiy and Aleksandrov (2019…
In this review we describe a transient type of gas discharge which is commonly called a streamer discharge, as well as a few related phenomena in pulsed discharges. Streamers are propagating ionization fronts with self-organized field…
In sufficiently large gaps and electric fields, discharge streamers do branch. In [Arrayas et al., PRL 88, 174502 (2002)], we observed streamer branching numerically within a deterministic particle density model and explained it as a…
Streamers are a generic mode of electric breakdown of large gas volumes. They play a role in the initial stages of sparks and lightning, in technical corona reactors and in high altitude sprite discharges above thunderclouds. Streamers are…
Most classical work on the hydrodynamics of low-Reynolds-number swimming addresses deterministic locomotion in quiescent environments. Thermal fluctuations in fluids are known to lead to a Brownian loss of the swimming direction. As most…
In the high field region at the head of a discharge streamer, the electron energy distribution develops a long tail. In negative streamers, these electrons can run away and contribute to energetic processes such as terrestrial gamma-ray and…
Previous studies of streamer discharge branching mechanisms have mainly been generative other than predictive. To predict or even control branching, a reliable connection between experimental conditions and streamer branching needs to be…
Stochasticity is a defining feature of the pairwise forces governing interactions in biological systems-from molecular motors to cell-cell adhesion-yet its consequences on large-scale dynamics remain poorly understood. Here, we show that…
Positive streamers are thought to propagate by photo-ionization whose parameters depend on the nitrogen:oxygen ratio. Therefore we study streamers in nitrogen with 20%, 0.2% and 0.01% oxygen and in pure nitrogen, as well as in pure oxygen…
We propose a new approach to unambiguous determination of parameters of positive and negative electric streamer discharges. From hydrodynamic equations, in the assumption of a solution in the shape of a streamer, it is possible to derive…
The dynamics of positive and negative streamers is numerically simulated in atmospheric pressure air. It is shown that positive and negative streamers behave in radically different ways when decelerating and stopping. When the head…
Positive streamers in ambient air at pressures from 0.013 to 1 bar are investigated experimentally. The voltage applied to the anode needle ranges from 5 to 45 kV, the discharge gap from 1 to 16 cm. Using a "slow" voltage rise time of 100…