Discharges for lighting

The most common man-made discharge is a lamp. Even though lamps are often considered a mature technology, the discharge physics is often poorly understood. Two recent initiatives discussed here show that plasma research can help to make significant improvements. First we discuss color separation in metal halide lamps, which is a problem that prevents these highly efficient lamps from being used in more applications. Secondly a novel lamp concept is presented that may replace the current mercury based fluorescent lamps