Modeling interactions of several sprite or lightning streamers
Abstract
Streamer discharges are "the elementary particles of discharge physics", as the late Dave Sentman used to say. They are basic elements of TLEs and of streamer coronas of lightning leaders, and they are also invoked in explaining TGFs from thunderstorms and hard X-rays from long laboratory sparks. Streamers typically appear in large numbers; they interact electrodynamically and through distributing electric current between streamer branches. However, simulations in the commonly used fluid approximation up to now are largely limited to single streamers that can be treated as cylindrically symmetric objects requiring only two-dimensional simulations. Here we present three-dimensional fluid simulations on the interaction of several streamers and identify essential elements of their interactions. The work is based on the computational code afivo [1] with parallelism and adaptive mesh refinement (written by Jannis Teunissen) that was already used to simulate the interaction of streamers with a patch of pre-ionization in [2]. [1] http://www.cwimd.nl/doku.php?id=codes:afivo [2] S. Nijdam, J. Teunissen, E. Takahashi, U. Ebert, The role of free electrons in the guiding of positive streamers, Plasma Sources Sci. Technol. 25, 044001 (2016).
- Publication:
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AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2016
- Bibcode:
- 2016AGUFMAE31A..04E
- Keywords:
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- 3304 Atmospheric electricity;
- ATMOSPHERIC PROCESSESDE: 3324 Lightning;
- ATMOSPHERIC PROCESSESDE: 3394 Instruments and techniques;
- ATMOSPHERIC PROCESSES