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

Roland Ackermann (1, 2) , Grégoire Méchain (3) , Guillaume Méjean (1) , R. Bourayou (4) , Miguel Rodriguez (2) , Kamil Stelmaszczyk (2) , Jérôme Kasparian (1) , Jin Yu (1) , Estelle Salmon (1) , Stellios Tzortzakis (3) , Yves-Bernard André (3) , J.-F. Bourrillon (5) , L. Tamin (5) , P. Cascelli (5) , C. Campo (5) , C. Davoise (5) , André Mysyrowicz (3) , Roland Sauerbrey (4) , Ludger Woeste (2) , Jean-Pierre Wolf (1)

1 LASIM - Laboratoire de Spectrométrie Ionique et Moléculaire
2 Institut für Experimentalphysik
3 LOA - Laboratoire d'optique appliquée
4 IOQ - Institut fur Optik und Quantenelectronik
5 CEAT - Centre d'Etude Aeronautique de Toulouse

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 μs.

Keywords: filamentation

Domains: Physics [physics]; Physics [physics]; Optics [physics.optics]

Roland Ackermann, Grégoire Méchain, Guillaume Méjean, R. Bourayou, Miguel Rodriguez, et al.. Influence of negative leader propagation on the triggering and guiding of high voltage discharges by laser filaments. Applied Physics B - Laser and Optics, 2006, 82 (4), pp.561-566. ⟨10.1007/s00340-005-2061-5⟩. ⟨hal-00463609⟩