Technical problems have hampered the study of sleep in teleosts. The electrical discharges of Gymnotus carapo L. (Gymnotidae: Gymnotiformes) were monitored to evaluate their ease and reliability as parameters to study sleep. The discharges were detected by electrodes immersed in a glass aquarium and were recorded on a conventional polygraph. G. carapo showed conspicuous signs of behavioral slee...

The guiding of meter scale electric discharges produced in air by a Tesla coil is realized in laboratory using a focused terawatt laser pulse undergoing filamentation. The influence of the focus position, the laser arrival time or the gap length is studied to determine the best conditions for efficient laser guiding. Discharge parameters such as delay, jitter and resistance are characterized. A...

A large scale model of sprites based on a phenomenological probabilistic approach to modeling of streamer corona discharges is developed. The model utilizes the experimentally documented macroscopic properties of positive and negative streamer corona in air and allows a realistic determination of the propagation of multiple breakdown branches in a self-consistent electric field. The model resul...

A number of laser-induced fluorescence and absorption spectroscopy studies have been conducted using Gaseous Electronics Conference Reference Cells. Laser-induced fluorescence has been used to measure hydrogen atom densities, to measure argon metastable spatial profiles, to determine the sheath electric field, and to infer the electron density and temperature. Absorption spectroscopy, using lam...

Xe/I2 low-pressure electric discharges are being developed as efficient, long-lived ultraviolet lighting sources. In this work the kinetics of low pressure, 0.5–5 Torr, radio-frequency inductively excited discharges sustained in Xe and I2 were investigated to determine the source of radiating states. The diagnostics applied in this study include optical absorption and emission spectroscopy, mic...

Under which circumstances are variational principles based on entropy production rate useful tools for modeling steady states of electric (gas) discharge systems far from equilibrium? It is first shown how various different approaches, as Steenbeck’s minimum voltage and Prigogine’s minimum entropy production rate principles are related to the maximum entropy production rate principle (MEPP). Se...

Regular bursts of electric field radiation pulses produced by three multiple-stroke cloud-to-ground discharges recorded in 1991 at the NASA Kennedy Space Center are analyzed. The bursts are similar in the number of pulses per burst and inter-pulse intervals to the “multiple burst” component (so-called component H) of the standard lightning environment for the design and testing of aerospace veh...

Dielectric material between capacitor electrodes increases the capacitance. However, when the electric field exceeds a threshold, electric breakdown in the dielectric discharges the capacitor suddenly and the stored energy is lost. We show that nano vacuum tubes do not have this problem because (i) electric breakdown can be suppressed with quantization phenomena, and (ii) the capacitance is lar...

Lichtenberg discovered dust figure phenomena of electrical discharges in 1777. His discovery came to the notice of many scientists because it was considered that the figures should show the motion of the electric fluid. Photographic Lichtenberg figures were obtained in the middle of the nineteenth century. Both of these figures, usually called "Lichtenberg figures", have been utilized in the st...