Speaker
Description
See the full abstract here:
http://ocs.ciemat.es/EPS2019ABS/pdf/P1.3017.pdf
Saint Elmo's fire and lightning are two known forms of naturally occurring atmospheric pressure plasmas. As a technology, non-thermal plasmas are induced from artificially created electromagnetic or electrostatic fields. Here we report the observation of arguably a new case of a naturally formed such plasma, created in air at room temperature without external electromagnetic action, by impinging a high-speed microjet of de-ionized water on a dielectric solid surface. We demonstrate that tribo-electrification from extreme and focused hydrodynamic shear is the driving mechanism for the generation of energetic free electrons. Air ionization results in a plasma that, unlike the general family, is topologically well-defined in the form of a coherent toroidal structure. Possibly confined through its self-induced electromagnetic field, this plasmoid is shown to emit strong luminescence and discrete-frequency radio waves. Our experimental study suggests the discovery of a novel platform to support new experimentation in low-temperature plasma science.
References
[1] Gharib M, Mendoza S, Rosenfeld M, Bezai M, Alves Pereira F (2017). Toroidal Plasmoid Generation Via Extreme Hydrodynamic Shear. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 114(48): 12657-12662.
