General Physics Seminar 5 February 2004


Mechanism of lightning and its attraction to the high structures

E.Bazelyan and Yu.Raizer
Dept Physical Gasdynamics of The Institute for Problems in Mechanics,
Russian Academy of Science, Moscow, Russia


The talk considers the inception of lightning in a cloud, the general nature of streamer-leader processes and propagation and attraction of a downward lightning leader to high terrestrial structures and large aircrafts.

The generation mechanism of upward lightning is considered also because as a rule, the attraction of downward lightning is connected with the initiation of an upward counterleader from the object which is struck.

The effect of remote objects on the lightning trajectory and its attraction to the object is discussed. The interaction mechanism is nontrivial since the electric strength of remote bodies at the leader location is so weak that it does not influence the leader velocity at all.

The work was carried out with E. Bazelyan.