Photoionization in negative streamers: Fast computations and two propagation modes

By Alejandro Luque, Ute Ebert, C. Montijn, Willem Hundsdorfer. 2006

207 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Streamer discharges play a central role in electric breakdown of matter in pulsed electric fields, both in nature and in technology. Reliable and fast computations of the minimal model for negative streamers in simple gases such as nitrogen have recently been developed. However, photoionization was not included; it is important in air and poses a major numerical challenge. The authors here introduce a fast and reliable method to include photoionization into our numerical scheme with adaptive grids, and they discuss its importance for negative streamers. In particular, they identify different propagation regimes where photoionization does or does not play a role.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Radiology, Nuclear Medicine and Imaging

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/dfabc267f98441c343ad343b7937f6dd2872d105

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Astronomy and Astrophysics

1. V. Pasko
2. S. Nijdam
3. Ute Ebert
4. Jannis Teunissen
5. S. Celestin
6. Alejandro Luque
7. Van Veldhuizen
8. Ningyu Liu

In Electrical and Electronic Engineering

1. V. Pasko
2. S. Nijdam
3. Ute Ebert
4. Jannis Teunissen
5. Van Veldhuizen
6. Alejandro Luque
7. S. Celestin
8. Chao Li

In Radiology, Nuclear Medicine and Imaging

1. S. Nijdam
2. Ute Ebert
3. V. Pasko
4. Jannis Teunissen
5. S. Celestin
6. Van Veldhuizen
7. Alejandro Luque
8. Ningyu Liu

Citations in the corpus

• The physics of streamer discharge phenomena (2020, methodology): “Scaling with the gas number density can only be done over a limited range, because the absorption function is fitted with functions that have a different algebraic decay [303].”
• Efficient models for photoionization produced by non-thermal gas discharges in air based on radiative transfer and the Helmholtz equations (2007, methodology): “…responsible for creation of seed electrons in front of the head of a propagating streamer, and is believed to play a critical role in the spatial advancement of streamers of both polarities (e.g. Babaeva and Naidis 1997, Rocco et al 2002, Kulikovsky 2000, Pancheshnyi et al 2001, Luque et al 2007).”
• Probing photo-ionization: experiments on positive streamers in pure gases and mixtures (2009, methodology): “[25] into a model of photoionization that nowadays is used in most streamer simulations [26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31].”
• Review of recent results on streamer discharges and discussion of their relevance for sprites and lightning (2010, background): “5 by Luque et al. [2008c]. Naidis [2009] suggests a relation between velocity, radius and enhanced field.”