Investigation of the transition from streamer to uniform ‘overvoltage’ mode of atmospheric air nanosecond-pulsed dielectric barrier discharge

Abstract

Abstract A nanosecond-pulsed dielectric barrier discharge ignited in atmospheric air was studied by optical emission spectroscopy to investigate the time- and space-resolved development of the reduced electric field. The discharge operated in two distinct modes that correlate with the values of the applied electric field: non-uniform streamer regime and uniform breakdown regime. It is shown that the reduced electric field in the non-uniform mode corresponds to the propagation of cathode-directed streamers, while in uniform discharge both molecular nitrogen emission and the reduced electric field are uniformly distributed along the gap during the initial discharge development stage with corresponding lower reduced electric field values.