Spontaneous branching of anode-directed streamers between planar electrodes.
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.
Arrayás
Manuel
M
CWI, P.O. Box 94079, 1090 GB Amsterdam, The Netherlands and Instituut-Lorentz, Universiteit Leiden, P.O. Box 9506, 2300 RA Leiden, The Netherlands.
Ebert
Ute
U
Hundsdorfer
Willem
W