stability analysis and numerical solutions

A DC-driven ”barrier ” discharge is a gas discharge layer and a high-Ohmic semiconductor layer sandwiched between planar electrodes to which a DC voltage is applied. The sys-tem resembles a dielectric barrier discharge, but is even simpler, as the external boundary conditions allow for a completely homogeneous and stationary state. Whole phase transi-tion diagrams to purely oscillating states or to states with spatio-temporal structures were determined in experiments that actually explored the regime between Townsend and glow discharge. We discuss the experimental conditions and our present theoretical understand-ing, that is based on stability analysis and numerical solutions of a fluid model for the gas discharge with space charge effects and a linear model for the semiconductor. 1. Experimental observations A dielectric barrier discharge is used frequently for gas treatment; it consists of a layered structure of at least one dielectric layer and a gas discharge layer placed between planar electrodes to which an AC voltage is applied [1, 2]. Here an even simpler phys