Electrostatic Disturbances of Aerosol Atmospheric Plasma: Beaded Lightning

Abstract

Numerous sources produce the ionization impact on the planetary atmosphere. The tropospheric cloudiness therewith is originated at such altitudes, which coincide with places of the maximum of the atmospheric ionization that caused by space radiation. Components of cosmic radiation, penetrating down to the stratospheric and tropospheric altitudes, produce in the first place the ionization of aerosols that brings to subsequent amplifying the activity of atmospheric vortices. The ionized aerosol constituent is of primary importance both in the initiation of plasma vortices and in the concentration of energy-mass by air vortices due to the humidity condensation. The ionization process is cascading, that causes the non-linear impact of penetrating rays, which amplifying with growing the air pollution. Various heterogeneities inside plasma subsystems provoke the random intensification of aperiodic electrostatic disturbances, which can exert a significant action on the development of vortices. Sometimes beaded lightning arises during thunderstorm. Using the approach of the Boltzmann kinetic equation, the characteristics of electrostatic oscillations for non-uniform plasma, are analytically derived. The analytical expressions are obtained for non-magnetized plasma. In the limits of the Earth’s atmosphere, these solutions are strictly applicable to the origination of electrostatic modulations along the lines of force of the geomagnetic field and approximately applicable in cases, when the impact of the Earth’s magnetic field is negligible. The explicit expressions are deduced both in the hot plasma approximation and in the cold plasma approximation. It is demonstrated that the formation of chain elements of discharge in hot inhomogeneous plasma is defined by the nonmonotonic distribution of charges and fields. At such conditions, the irregularities breaks up into a cellular structure.