Quantitative modeling of streamer discharge branching in air

Abstract Streamer discharges are the primary mode of electric breakdown air in lightning and high voltage technology. channels branch many times, which determines developing tree-like discharge structure. Understanding these branched structures is for example important to describe streamer coronas research. We simulate branching positive streamers using a 3D fluid model where photoionization included as discrete stochastic process. The probability morphology good agreement with dedicated experiments. This demonstrates that indeed provides noise triggers branching, we show remarkably sensitive amount photoionization. Our comparison therefore one first tests Zheleznyak's model, confirming its validity.