Study of streamer development in high-pressure electric discharge: Applications to excimer lasers

This work represents a study of the streamer formation in plasma for XeCl excimer laser at high pressure. It is based on a longitudinal mono-dimensional model of the cathodic zone. In this model, we show the possibility of the streamer development in the cathodic sheath and its propagation during the phase of plasma formation. The model gives the space and time evolution of the electron density and the discharge electric field in the presence of the streamer. The obtained results clearly indicate that, for conditions close to experiments for 50–100 ns laser pulse durations and electron power deposition in the MW/cm3 range in a 300 cm3 chamber, the streamer instability, related to the sheath evolution, patently appears. The drift velocity reaches a typical value of about 108 cm/s.