Augsburg 2006 – scientific programme

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P: Plasmaphysik

P 34: Dichte Plasmen 2 und Theorie 2

P 34.7: Talk

Thursday, March 30, 2006, 12:45–13:00, 1004

Current patterns and slow behavior of electrical discharges — •Shalva Amiranashvili, Svetlana Gurevich, and Hans-Georg Purwins — Institut für Angewandte Physik, Münster, Germany

As a matter of fact, glow current patterns, e.g., anode spots, evolve on a time scale that is much longer than both electron and ion travel times. We address the problem of glow description on this large time scale. Here a numerical solution of the relevant equations is difficult. Instead, we present a semi-analytical approach based on the multi-scale character of this problem.

A classical drift-diffusion set of discharge equations is systematically reduced to a reaction-diffusion set. The latter is much more simpler to analyze and implement numerically, as compared to the original system. Several applications to a glow discharge in the plane geometry are considered. It turns out that the reaction-diffusion approach is less informative but still capable for quantitative predictions.