Related papers: The physics of streamer discharge phenomena
In this paper we study the effects of photoionization processes on the propagation of both negative and positive streamer discharges. We show that negative fronts accelerate in the presence of photoionization events. The appearance and…
In this paper, we address two main topics: steady propagation fields for positive streamers in air and streamer deceleration in fields below the steady propagation field. We generate constant-velocity positive streamers in air with an…
In this paper, we study how streamer discharges are influenced by a previous voltage pulse using an axisymmetric fluid model. We simulate double-pulse positive streamers in N2-O2 mixtures containing 20% and 10% O2 at 1 bar. By varying the…
Positive and negative streamers are studied in ambient air at 1 bar; they emerge from a needle electrode placed 40 mm above a planar electrode. The amplitudes of the applied voltage pulses range from 5 to 96 kV; most pulses have rise times…
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…
Dripping, jetting and tip streaming have been studied up to a certain point separately by both fluid mechanics and microfluidics communities, the former focusing on fundamental aspects while the latter on applications. Here, we intend to…
Peterson et al. [2009] intend to determine the NOx production of sprites and blue jets from laboratory experiments. Sprite discharges are known to be physically similar to streamer discharges at standard temperature and pressure. However,…
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…
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…
We simulate short positive and negative streamers in air at standard temperature and pressure. They evolve in homogeneous electric fields or emerge from needle electrodes with voltages of 10 to 20 kV. The streamer velocity at given streamer…
We simulate and characterize positive streamers in ambient air in homogeneous background electric fields from 4.5 to 26 kV/cm in a 4 cm gap. They can accelerate or decelerate depending on the background electric field. Many experiments have…
A contour dynamics model for electrical discharges is obtained and analyzed. The model is deduced as the asymptotic limit of the minimal streamer model for the propagation of electric discharges, in the limit of small electron diffusion.…
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…
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…
A recently proposed Following Streamer mechanism (Feng et al. 2025 Phys. Rev. Applied 23 064039) seeks to explain how floating metal particles induce SF6 streamer breakdown in the combined gap. This mechanism is derived from a 2D…
Growing observational evidence suggests that Class II protoplanetary disks may undergo substantial interactions with their environment in the form of late infall. This mass inflow predominantly manifests itself in the form of so-called…
We investigate the propagation of positive streamers in CO$_2$ through 3D particle-in-cell simulations, which are qualitatively compared against experimental results at 50 mbar. The experiments show that CO$_2$ streamers are much more…
Standard photographs of streamer discharges show a two-dimensional projection. We here present stereo-photographic images that resolve their three-dimensional structure. We describe the stereoscopic set-up and evaluation, and we present…
We introduce a 3D hybrid model for streamer discharges that follows the dynamics of single electrons in the region with strong field enhancement at the streamer tip while approximating the many electrons in the streamer interior as…
It is shown that a new type of the self-similar spherical ionization waves may exist in gases. All spatial scales and the propagation velocity of such waves increase exponentially in time. Conditions for existence of these waves are…