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the streamer currents help to keep the leader hot and conductive. Under sufficiently high voltages, the leader will continue to extend itself further into the gap, doing so in a series of jumps until the entire gap has been bridged. Although leaders are most often associated with the initial formative stages of a
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If the electrical field is sufficiently high, the individual currents from multitudes of streamers combine to create a hot, highly conductive path that projects from the electrode, going some distance into the gap. The projecting channel of hot plasma is called a leader, and it can have an electrical
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the electrical field from the nearby electrode further into the gap, similar to introducing a short length of wire into the gap. The tip of the conductive leader now forms a new region from which streamers can extend even further into the gap. As new streamer discharges feed the tip of the leader,
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into a single channel, propagating forward quickly via photon emission which leads to photoelectrons producing new avalanches. Streamers redistribute charge within the surrounding gas, temporarily forming regions of excess charge
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stroke, they are characteristic of the development of all long sparks. In the case of a lightning leader, each extension (called a
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near the electrode with the highest electrical stress. If the electrical field is further increased, longer length
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is often quite non-uniform near one, or both, of the high voltage electrodes making up a
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