A honeycomb hexagonal pattern is observed in a dielectric barrier discharge system, which bifurcates from a square pattern. As the filaments composing the pattern emit visible light, an optical system is specially designed to study the spatiotemporal dynamics of the honeycomb hexagonal pattern. The light emitted from pattern, one honeycomb-like cell, filaments in a line of a cell, and a single filament are detected, respectively. The measurement on spatiotemporal correlation between two different individual filaments is also performed. It is found that the honeycomb hexagonal patternis an interleaving of three hexagonal sublattices discharging harmonically and subharmonically. It is found experimentally that the discharge current signals have three pulses in each half cycle of the driven voltage. Its characteristics are also investigated by measuring FWHMs and peak voltages of the three discharge pulses, as well as the time intervals between peaks of different pulses, respectively.

Date Published: 28 November 2007
PDF: 8 pages
Proc. SPIE 6834, Optical Design and Testing III, 68343H (28 November 2007); doi: 10.1117/12.757652

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 6834:
Optical Design and Testing III
Yongtian Wang; Theo T. Tschudi; Jannick P. Rolland; Kimio Tatsuno, Editor(s)