Modeling of a New Electron Acceleration Mechanism Ahead of Streamers

Abstract

Head‐on collisions between negative and positive streamers have been proposed as a mechanism behind X‐ray emissions by laboratory spark discharges. Recent simulations using plasma fluid and particle in cell models of a single head‐on collision of two streamers of opposite polarities in ground pressure air predicted an insignificant number of thermal runaway electrons >1 keV and hence weak undetectable X‐ray emissions. Because the current available models of a single streamer collision failed to explain the observations, we first use a Monte Carlo model coupled with multiple static dielectric ellipsoids immersed in a subbreakdown ambient electric field as a description of multiple streamer environment and we investigate the ability of multiple streamer‐streamer head‐on collisions to accelerate runaway electrons >1 keV up to energies ∼200–300 keV instead of just one single head‐on collision. The results of simulations show that the streamer head‐on collision mechanism fails to accelerate electrons; instead, they decelerate in the positive streamer channel. In a second part, we use a streamer plasma fluid model to simulate a new streamer‐electron acceleration mechanism based on a collision of a large negative streamer with a small neutral plasma patch in different Laplacian electric fields |E 0|= (35, 40, 45) kV/cm, respectively. We observe the formation of a secondary short propagating negative streamer with a strong peak electric field >250 up to 378 kV/cm over a time duration of ∼0.16 ns at the moment of the collision. The mechanism produces up to 106 runaway electrons with an upper energy limit of 24 keV.