Abstract
Air breakdown plasma channel produced by focusing a intense laser light is used to trigger lightning.1 Figure 1 shows the schematic of the laser triggered lightning test site consisting of a CO2 laser system and a lightning tower. The laser system delivers energies large enough to produce 50- to 100-m-long plasma channels from the top of the lightning tower. A leader propagation initiates from the plasma channel with the help of enhanced fields at the top of the tower.
© 1994 Optical Society of America
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