8 research outputs found
Meteorological aspects of selfâinitiated upward lightning at the SĂ€ntis tower (Switzerland)
Interest in exploring the meteorological conditions favoring upward lightning from tall manâmade structures has grown in recent years, largely due to the worldwide expansion of wind energy. To this end, instrumented towers existing around the world are the most suitable places to study upward lightning. In this context, an LMA network was deployed around the SĂ€ntis Mountain (northeast Switzerland) during the summer of 2017, in order to complement the longâterm measurements currently held at the SĂ€ntis telecommunications tower, a lightning hotspot in Central Europe. This campaign allowed, for the first time, to gather a comprehensive set of observations of selfâinitiated upward lightning emerging from the Tower. With the help of Câband dualâpolarimetric radar data, the present work focuses on the meteorological conditions conductive to selfâinitiated upward lightning from the SĂ€ntis. The analysis revealed that the upwardâpropagating positivelyâcharged leaders spread mostly horizontal above the melting level, after an initial short vertical path from the tower tip. After this initial stage, the majority of upward leaders were followed by a sequence of negative return strokes. The inception upward lightning under a stratiform cloud shield would be favored by the low height of the charge structure. From the obtained results, it turns out that a key feature favoring selfâinitiated upward lightning would be the proximity of the tower tip to the melting level
The Effect of Nuclear Elastic Scattering on Temperature Equilibration Rate of Ions in Fusion Plasma
A plasma with two different particle types and at different temperatures has been considered, so that each type of ion with Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution function is in temperature equilibrium with itself. Using the extracted nuclear elastic scattering differential cross-section from experimental data, solving the Boltzmann equation, and also taking into account the mobility of the background particles, temperature equilibration rate between two different ions in a fusion plasma is calculated. The results show that, at higher temperature differences, effect of nuclear elastic scattering is more important in calculating the temperature equilibration rate. The obtained expressions have general form so that they are applicable to each type of particle for background (b) and each type for projectile (p). In this paper, for example, an equimolar Deuterium-Hydrogen plasma with density n=5Ă1025âcmâ3 is chosen in which the deuteron is the background particle with temperature (also electron temperature) Tb=1âkeV (usual conditions for a fusion plasma at the ignition instant) and the proton is the projectile with temperature Tp>Tb. These calculations, particularly, are very important for ion fast ignition in inertial confinement fusion concept