Spontaneous Branching of Anode-Directed Streamers between Planar Electrodes
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, …