2026/07/29 by Miguel Boaventura Teixeira Gomes, Francisco J Gordillo-Vazquez, Alejandro Malagón-Romero +1
paper · doi:10.1088/1361-6595/ae91cc
Abstract The encounter and merging of two streamers of opposite polarity has been conjectured to be the source of runaway electrons and of Very High Frequency (VHF) radio emissions, two processes associated with leader propagation. Present in long spark discharges and in the initial stages of lightning, leaders are highly conducting, hot channels with poorly understood dynamics. An improved understanding of streamer encounters can therefore shed light on the microphysics of leader propagation. Previous modeling research has focused on the encounter between streamers that propagate along a shared axis. Here we use a three-dimensional model with Adaptive Mesh Refinement (AMR) that leverages the numerical performance of Graphical Processing Units (GPUs) to extend these results to off-axis streamer encounters. Our results enable testable predictions of the electromagnetic Energy Spectral Density (ESD) expected from the encounter between opposite-polarity coronas containing large numbers of individual streamers.