Long Gap Discharge Guiding Experiments Using Strongly and Weakly Ionized Plasma Channels for Laser Triggered Lightning

A study to generate longer plasma channel was conucted to improve probability of triggered lightning. To generate the long laser plasma channel, a strongly and a weakly ionized plasma channels were used in series, a scheme called hybrid method. The strongly and the weakly ionized plasma channels were used for triggering an electrical leader and guiding the leader. The electrical leader propagated through the weakly ionized plasma. Then main discharge occurred between the electrodes. It is found that the streamer was accelerated with both the increase in the plasma density and the increase in an ambient electric field close to the plane electrode.