M J 2008, Streamer branching: The role of inhomogeneities and bubbles

Abstract—The branching of streamers in atmospheric-pressure air, dense gases, and liquids is a common occurrence whose ori-gins are likely found with many causes, both deterministic and stochastic. In this paper, we investigate the consequences of sto-chastic inhomogeneities on the propensity of branching of stream-ers in high-pressure gases. Index Terms—Branching, corona, streamers. THE BRANCHING of streamers, which is a phenomenonthat occurs in nearly all high-pressure gases and liquids, is being investigated from many experimental and computational perspectives [1]. Branching likely depends on many parameters (e.g., gas or liquid type, pressure, and rate of voltage rise). How-ever, this dependence cannot be too system specific because branching is so common. This is particularly true for streamers in liquids where branching is nearly universal. One proposed mechanism for streamer branching is inhomogeneities in th