Elementary Processes in the Development of the Electrical Breakdown of Liquids

A review is given of the elementary processes which play a role in the initiation and the propagation of electric breakdown processes in liquids. The discussion is essentially limited to pure, non-polar liquids subjected to step-impulse voltages and to voltages which vary slowly in time (dc, line-frequency ac). The topics treated include: electrode processes, ionization in the liquid phase, bubble formation, and evolution of the breakdown phenomenon.