Phys. Rev. Lett. 88, 174502 (2002) [4 pages]

Spontaneous Branching of Anode-Directed Streamers between Planar Electrodes

Abstract

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Manuel Arrayás^1,2,*, Ute Ebert^1,3, and Willem Hundsdorfer¹
¹CWI, P.O. Box 94079, 1090 GB Amsterdam, The Netherlands
²Instituut-Lorentz, Universiteit Leiden, P.O. Box 9506, 2300 RA Leiden, The Netherlands
³Department of Physics, TU Eindhoven, 5600 MB Eindhoven, The Netherlands

Received 16 November 2001; published 16 April 2002

See accompanying Physics Focus

Nonionized media subject to strong fields can become locally ionized by penetration of finger-shaped streamers. We study negative streamers between planar electrodes in a simple deterministic continuum approximation. We observe that, for sufficiently large fields, the streamer tip can split. This happens close to the limit of “ideal conductivity.” Qualitatively, the tip splitting is due to a Laplacian instability quite like that in viscous fingering. For future quantitative analytical progress, our stability analysis of planar fronts identifies the screening length as a regularization mechanism.

URL:

http://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevLett.88.174502

DOI:

10.1103/PhysRevLett.88.174502

PACS:

52.80.Mg, 05.45.-a, 47.54.+r, 51.50.+v

^*New address: Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, Escuela Superior de Ciencias Exp. y tecnologia, c. Tulipan s/n, 28933 Mostoles, Madrid, Spain.

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Phys. Rev. Lett. 88, 174502 (2002) [4 pages]

Spontaneous Branching of Anode-Directed Streamers between Planar Electrodes

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