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. 2015 Dec 18:5:18681.
doi: 10.1038/srep18681.

Direct observation of laser guided corona discharges

Tie-Jun Wang  1 , Yingxia Wei  1 , Yaoxiang Liu  1 , Na Chen  1 , Yonghong Liu  1 , Jingjing Ju  1 , Haiyi Sun  1 , Cheng Wang  1 , Haihe Lu  1 , Jiansheng Liu  1 , See Leang Chin  2 , Ruxin Li  1 , Zhizhan Xu  1
Affiliations

Direct observation of laser guided corona discharges

Tie-Jun Wang et al. Sci Rep. .

Abstract

Laser based lightning control holds a promising way to solve the problem of the long standing disaster of lightning strikes. But it is a challenging project due to insufficient understanding of the interaction between laser plasma channel and high voltage electric filed. In this work, a direct observation of laser guided corona discharge is reported. Laser filament guided streamer and leader types of corona discharges were observed. An enhanced ionization took place in the leader (filament) through the interaction with the high voltage discharging field. The fluorescence lifetime of laser filament guided corona discharge was measured to be several microseconds, which is 3 orders of magnitude longer than the fluorescence lifetime of laser filaments. This work could be advantageous towards a better understanding of laser assisted leader development in the atmosphere.

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Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1. The schematic of experimental setup.
Figure 2
Figure 2
(a) real-color images of typical filament guided corona discharge, the filament being the white elongated horizontal region, (b) corona discharge without laser filament, (c,d) for the fine structures for those streamers in the forward direction of laser propagation from (a,b), respectively. The corona discharging voltage and filamenting pulse energy were 50 kV and 7.5 mJ, respectively.
Figure 3
Figure 3. Streamer type of corona discharges propagation along laser filaments.
Corona discharges were generated by applying a 50 kV high voltage on the electrode. Filament length was controlled by femtosecond laser pulse energy ranging from 0.25 mJ to 4.3 mJ.
Figure 4
Figure 4. Laser pulse energy dependence of corona discharge power (a) and of FGCD induced fluorescence intensity (b).
The fluorescence intensity in (b) was calculated by integrating the pixel intensity of the streamers in the rectangular areas as shown in the inset figure from the FGCD images in Fig. 3. Each pair of rectangles was separated so as to avoid including the direct contribution of the light coming from the on-axis filament zone.
Figure 5
Figure 5. Corona discharge power as a function of supplying voltage with (red round dots) and without (black square dots) laser filaments.
Red and black solid lines are exponential fittings to experimental data. Filamenting pulse energy was 7.95 mJ.
Figure 6
Figure 6
(a) typical fluorescence spectrum in UV (290–440 nm) emitted by corona discharge (CD), pure filamentation (FIL) and plasma channel of filament-guided corona discharge (FGCD), respectively. The voltage for corona discharge and the laser pulse energy for filamentation in the three cases were fixed at 50 kV and 7.0 mJ, respectively. (b) pseudocolor plot of fluorescence spectral intensity of FGCD with CD and FIL fluorescence intensity subtracted as a function of the laser pulse energy tuning range from 0.7 mJ to 7 mJ. The CD voltage was fixed at 50 kV.
Figure 7
Figure 7. Lifetime of filament guided leader type of corona discharges.
Filamenting pulse energy was 4.8 mJ. Corona discharging voltage was 50 kV.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

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