Related papers: The multiscale nature of streamers
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
We introduce the generic structure of a growth model for branched discharge trees that consistently combines a finite channel conductivity with the physical law of charge conservation. It is applicable, e.g., to streamer coronas near tip or…
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…
Streamers are the first stage of sparks and lightning; they grow due to a strongly enhanced electric field at their tips; this field is created by a thin curved space charge layer. These multiple scales are already challenging when the…
We use numerical simulations to study the dynamics of surface discharges, which are common in high-voltage engineering. We simulate positive streamer discharges that propagate towards a dielectric surface, attach to it, and then propagate…
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…
We investigate streamer formation in the troposphere, in electric fields above the breakdown threshold. With fully three-dimensional particle simulations, we study the combined effect of natural background ionization and of photoionization…
In work the results of the analysis are presented relating to the status of a streamer discharge mode in different gas detectors developed at the moment in laboratories and nuclear-physics installations. Thanks to new representations from a…
Streamers often constitute the first stage of dielectric breakdown in strong electric fields: a nonlinear ionization wave transforms a non-ionized medium into a weakly ionized nonequilibrium plasma. New understanding of this old phenomenon…
The growth of streamer discharges is determined at their heads, for individual streamers as well as in collective phenomena, such as streamer trees or coronas or streamer bursts ahead of lightning leaders. Some properties of the streamer…
Sprite discharges are electrical discharges that initiate from the lower ionosphere during intense lightning storms, manifesting themselves optically as flashes of light that last a few milliseconds. This study unravels sprite initiation…
Propagation of positive streamers in dielectric liquids, modeled by the electron avalanche mechanism, is simulated in a needle-plane gap. The streamer is modeled as an RC-circuit where the channel is a resistor and the extremities of the…
Branching is an essential element of streamer discharge dynamics but today it is understood only qualitatively. The variability and irregularity observed in branched streamer trees suggest that stochastic terms are relevant for the…
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…
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…