Influence of negative leader propagation on the triggering and guiding of high voltage discharges by laser filaments Academic Article uri icon

abstract

  • The triggering and guiding of negative discharges using filaments induced by a femtosecond-terawatt laser pulse have been studied in sphere-plane gaps up to 4.5 meters. Fast-frame camera pictures allow the evaluation of the influence of the negative leader propagation on the triggering and guiding process. We show that the plasma channel can either trigger a space-leader discharge or act as a guiding path for the negative leader head. For the latter case the results suggest a linear dependence of the guided lengths up to 2.4 m, while the formation of a space-leader reduces this guided length by up to 50%. This effect is explained by the limited plasma lifetime of the filament that is measured to be about 1 s.

published proceedings

  • APPLIED PHYSICS B-LASERS AND OPTICS

author list (cited authors)

  • Ackermann, R., Mechain, G., Mejean, G., Bourayou, R., Rodriguez, M., Stelmaszczyk, K., ... Wolf, J. P.

citation count

  • 53

complete list of authors

  • Ackermann, R||Mechain, G||Mejean, G||Bourayou, R||Rodriguez, M||Stelmaszczyk, K||Kasparian, J||Yu, J||Salmon, E||Tzortzakis, S||Andre, YB||Bourrillon, JF||Tamin, L||Cascelli, JP||Campo, C||Davoise, C||Mysyrowicz, A||Sauerbrey, R||Woste, L||Wolf, JP

publication date

  • March 2006