Paper
12 March 2020 Triggering and guiding of lightning by ultrafast lasers
Author Affiliations +
Abstract
Lightning causes great property losses to human beings every year, therefore how to control lightning and reduce its harm has always been one of the hotspots of the scientific community. In recent years, with the development of high energy ultra-fast laser technology, the peak power of ultrafast laser has been able to reach the GW, TW and even PW. Under the support of such high peak power laser technology, a new type of lightning triggering and guiding technology -- lasertriggered lightning has gradually attracted researchers’ attention. When the laser power intensity reaches TW, Kerr selffocusing effect and plasma defocusing effect will reach dynamic equilibrium. At this time, a light filament with a diameter of a few millimeters and a length of several hundred meters will be formed in the atmosphere, and a low-density plasma channel will be generated in the path. Then a leader is formed through the plasma channel which can trigger and guide discharge from the thunderstorm cloud. Compared with the traditional triggering and guiding of lightning technology, triggering and guiding of lightning by ultrafast Laser has the advantages of flexibility, pollution-free, no consumable consumption, flexible initiative, etc. It will be an important lightning triggering and guiding technology in the future, and it has gradually attracted the attention of scholars from various countries and has obtained a lot of research results. This paper mainly introduces the basic principles of laser-triggered-and-guided lightning, including the laser filament formation mechanism, the basic principle of laser-triggered-and-guided lightning and its history and recent research progress. Moreover, the scientific difficult problems and possible solutions for laser-triggered-and-guided lightning are also discussed, which can be a reference for future development of laser-triggered-and-guided lightning technology.
© (2020) COPYRIGHT Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE). Downloading of the abstract is permitted for personal use only.
Haitao Zhang and Qihang Gong "Triggering and guiding of lightning by ultrafast lasers", Proc. SPIE 11437, 2019 International Conference on Optical Instruments and Technology: Advanced Laser Technology and Applications, 114370O (12 March 2020); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2550060
Advertisement
Advertisement
RIGHTS & PERMISSIONS
Get copyright permission  Get copyright permission on Copyright Marketplace
KEYWORDS
Laser applications

Ultrafast lasers

Plasma

Atmospheric plasma

Laser development

Clouds

Kerr effect

RELATED CONTENT

High altitude filament propagation
Proceedings of SPIE (January 01 1900)
High-energy ultrafast thin-disk amplifiers
Proceedings of SPIE (March 07 2019)
Ultrafast laser induced controllable jet in liquid
Proceedings of SPIE (February 15 2008)
TW lasers in air ultra high powers and optimal...
Proceedings of SPIE (July 09 2007)

Back to Top