Related papers: Electric streamers as a nonlinear instability: the…
In dielectric breakdown, the phenomena of streamers formation and spontaneous branching is commonly observed. A deterministic negative streamer model is reviewed in this article. We recently have proposed that this reduced model is able to…
A major obstacle for the understanding of long electrical discharges is the complex dynamics of streamer coronas, formed by many thin conducting filaments. Building macroscopic models for these filaments is one approach to attain a deeper…
Streamer electrical discharges are often investigated with computer simulations of density models (also called drift-diffusion-reaction models). We review these models, detailing their physical foundations, their range of validity and the…
In this paper we present the complete derivation of the effective contour model for electrical discharges which appears as the asymptotic limit of the minimal streamer model for the propagation of electric discharges, when the electron…
We recently have presented first physical predictions of a spatially hybrid model that follows the evolution of a negative streamer discharge in full three spatial dimensions; our spatially hybrid model couples a particle model in the high…
Streamer discharges can be used as a primary source of reactive species for plasma-assisted combustion. In this research we investigate positive streamers in a stoichiometric air-methane mixture at 1 bar and 300 K with a three-dimensional…
We investigate the dynamics of negative surface discharges in air through numerical simulations with a 2D fluid model. A geometry consisting of a flat dielectric embedded between parallel-plate electrodes is used. Compared to negative…
Streamers are ionization fronts that occur in gases at atmospheric and sub-atmospheric pressures. Numerical studies of streamers are important for practical applications but are challenging due to the multiscale nature of this discharge…
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…
We study positive streamers in air propagating along polycarbonate dielectric plates with and without small-scale surface profiles. The streamer development was documented using light-sensitive high-speed cameras and a photo-multiplier…
Streamer ionization fronts are pulled fronts propagating into a linearly unstable state; the spatial decay of the initial condition of a planar front selects dynamically one specific long time attractor out of a continuous family. 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…
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…
Dynamical systems describe the changes in processes that arise naturally from their underlying physical principles, such as the laws of motion or the conservation of mass, energy or momentum. These models facilitate a causal explanation for…
A nonlinear Schr\"odinger equation with repulsive (defocusing) nonlinearity is considered. As an example, a system with a spatially varying coefficient of the nonlinear term is studied. The nonlinearity is chosen to be repelling except on a…
We present the first analytical and numerical studies of the initial stage of the branching process based on an interface dynamics streamer model in the fully 3-D case. This model follows from fundamental considerations on charge production…
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…
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…
The evolution of negative streamers during electric breakdown of a non-attaching gas can be described by a two-fluid model for electrons and positive ions. It consists of continuity equations for the charged particles including drift,…
We use a three-specie fluid model of electric discharge in air to simulate streamer evolution from the avalanche-to-streamer transition to the collision of opposite-polarity streamers. We estimate the upper limit on the production of…