A new Concept of Ball Lightning

TL;DR

This paper proposes a novel concept that ball lightning is a weakly ionized gas capable of trapping electromagnetic radiation via Bose-Einstein condensation or photon trapping, leading to its instability and explosive energy release.

Contribution

It introduces a new theoretical model describing ball lightning as a weakly ionized gas with photon trapping mechanisms and analyzes its stability and potential explosive behavior.

Findings

BL can be unstable when moving along charged surfaces.

Photon trapping and Bose-Einstein condensation can occur in BL.

Instability leads to explosive energy release.

Abstract

We suggest that the ball lightning (BL) is a weakly ionized gas, in which the electromagnetic radiation can be accumulated through the Bose-Einstein condensation and/or the photon trapping in the plasma density well. We derive the set of equations describing the stability of BL, and show that the BL moving along charged surface becomes unstable. Eventually the instability leads to explosion of BL and release of energy of the trapped photons and/or the Bose-Einstein condensate.