Study of the dynamics of gaseous positive streamer filaments in pentane

The authors present a study of the dynamics of positive streamer filaments in pentane, for hydrostatic pressures above 1MPa. They describe an experimental setup allowing the simultaneous visualization of the channels, together with the electrooptical time-resolved measurement of their diameter. The dynamics of the expansion and collapse is fairly well described by Rayleigh theory, showing that the filaments are gaseous channels. It is shown that the stopping of filamentary streamers at high pressure is determined by the collapse of the channel. The behavior of the filaments may be described by considering their extremities as moving point sources of energy