Improvement of the atmospheric discharge laser-triggered ability using multiple pulses from a kilohertz KrF laser

The potential ability of lasers to control lightning can be improved by using a train of pulses with submillisecond separations. Laser-triggered experiments in a small-scale (10-mm gap) atmospheric discharge facility show that the triggering is dramatically enhanced when a five-pulse train of sub-Joule energy is used instead of a single pulse. This effect increases rapidly as the pulse interval is reduced. It appears that at a submillisecond pulse interval, sufficient positive and negative ions survive in subsequent pulses, thus enabling easy deionization. Hence, significant plasma buildup occurs from one pulse to the next. However, this persistence of ions would appear to imply that the rate of recombination (effectively a charge transfer between ions) is considerably lower than previously believed.