Optical beaming of electrical discharges

V. Shvedov, E. Pivnev, A. R. Davoyan (), W. Krolikowski and A. E. Miroshnichenko ()
Additional contact information
V. Shvedov: Australian National University
E. Pivnev: Australian National University
A. R. Davoyan: University of California
W. Krolikowski: Australian National University
A. E. Miroshnichenko: University of New South Wales

Nature Communications, 2020, vol. 11, issue 1, 1-7

Abstract: Abstract Igniting and guiding electrical discharges to desired targets in the ambient atmosphere have been a subject of intense research efforts for decades. Ability to control discharge and its propagation can pave the way to a broad range of applications from nanofabrication and plasma medicine to monitoring of atmospheric pollution and, ultimately, taming lightning strikes. Numerous experiments utilizing powerful pulsed lasers with peak-intensity above air photoionization and photo-dissociation have demonstrated excitation and confinement of plasma tracks in the wakes of laser field. Here, we propose and demonstrate an efficient approach for triggering, trapping and guiding electrical discharges in air. It is based on the use of a low-power continuous-wave vortex beam that traps and transports light-absorbing particles in mid-air. We demonstrate a 30% decrease in discharge threshold mediated by optically trapped graphene microparticles with the use of a laser beam of a few hundred milliwatts of power. Our demonstration may pave the way to guiding electrical discharges along arbitrary paths.

Date: 2020
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-19183-0 Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:11:y:2020:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-020-19183-0

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-020-19183-0

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().