| Issue |
EPL
Volume 103, Number 2, July 2013
|
|
|---|---|---|
| Article Number | 25002 | |
| Number of page(s) | 6 | |
| Section | Physics of Gases, Plasmas and Electric Discharges | |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1209/0295-5075/103/25002 | |
| Published online | 13 August 2013 | |
Streamers in air splitting into three branches
1 Department of Applied Physics, Eindhoven University of Technology - P.O. Box 513, 5600 MB Eindhoven, The Netherlands, EU
2 Centrum Wiskunde and Informatica (CWI) - P.O. Box 94079, 1090 GB Amsterdam, The Netherlands, EU
Received: 3 May 2013
Accepted: 16 July 2013
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 applied to a needle electrode 160 mm above a grounded plate. By imaging the discharge with two cameras from three angles, we establish that about every 200th branching event is a branching into three. Branching into three occurs more frequently for the relatively thicker streamers. In fact, we find that the surface of the total streamer cross-sections before and after a branching event is roughly the same.
PACS: 52.80.-s – Electric discharges / 52.70.Kz – Optical (ultraviolet, visible, infrared) measurements
© EPLA, 2013
Current usage metrics show cumulative count of Article Views (full-text article views including HTML views, PDF and ePub downloads, according to the available data) and Abstracts Views on Vision4Press platform.
Data correspond to usage on the plateform after 2015. The current usage metrics is available 48-96 hours after online publication and is updated daily on week days.
Initial download of the metrics may take a while.