Construction and test of a moving boundary model for negative streamer discharges

TL;DR

This paper develops a moving boundary model for negative streamer discharges based on a minimal particle density model, deriving boundary conditions and validating the approximation against 2D simulations to capture essential front dynamics.

Contribution

It introduces a novel moving boundary approximation with kinetic undercooling boundary conditions for negative streamer fronts, validated against detailed density model simulations.

Findings

The boundary condition is of 'kinetic undercooling' type.

The approximation accurately captures the essential dynamics of streamer fronts.

Validation shows good agreement with 2D density model simulations.

Abstract

Starting from the minimal model for the electrically interacting particle densities in negative streamer discharges, we derive a moving boundary approximation for the ionization fronts. The boundary condition on the moving front is found to be of 'kinetic undercooling' type. The boundary approximation, whose first results have been published in [Meulenbroek et al., PRL 95, 195004 (2005)], is then tested against 2-dimensional simulations of the density model. The results suggest that our moving boundary approximation adequately represents the essential dynamics of negative streamer fronts.