Fundamental processes in long air gap discharges

The development of atmospheric lightning is initiated and sustained by the formation in virgin air of ‘streamer corona’ and ‘leader’ discharges, very similar to those observed in laboratory long sparks. Therefore, the experimental and theoretical investigations of these laboratory discharges have become of large interest to improve the physical knowledge of the lightning process and to develop self-consistent models that could be applied to new protection concepts.In the present paper the fundamental processes of the subsequent phases of long air gap discharges are analyzed, from the first corona inception and development to the leader channel formation and propagation. For all these processes simulations models are discussed that have been essentially derived and simplified by the authors, in order to develop sequential time-dependent simulation of the laboratory breakdown, with both positive and negative voltages. The possibility of extending these models to the case of natural lightning is discussed in the companion paper, presented in this same volume. To cite this article: I. Gallimberti et al., C. R. Physique 3 (2002) 1335–1359.     

Rehabilitation of the Gauss-Jordan algorithm

Summary In this paper a Gauss-Jordan algorithm with column interchanges is presented and analysed. We show that, in contrast with Gaussian elimination, the Gauss-Jordan algorithm has essentially differing properties when using column interchanges instead of row interchanges for improving the numerical stability. For solutions obtained by Gauss-Jordan with column interchanges, a more satisfactory bound for the residual norm can be given. The analysis gives theoretical evidence that the algorithm yields numerical solutions as good as those obtained by Gaussian elimination and that, in most practical situations, the residuals are equally small. This is confirmed by numerical experiments. Moreover, timing experiments on a Cyber 205 vector computer show that the algorithm presented has good vectorisation properties.     

有限时滞微分系统依照双测度的实际稳定性

本文对具有有限时滞的泛函微分方程建立了关于依照两种测度的实际稳定性的Razumikhin型判定定理，其中未采用通常的辅助函数，且可运用多个含有状态变量x的部分变元的Lyapunov函数，得出部分变远实际稳定性的判定定理，从而改进了已有的结果。     

Laser induced copper electroless plating on polyimide with Q-switch Nd:YAG laser

The results of laser induced deposition of copper on polyimide substrate from copper electrolyte solution are reported. Unlike most work reported in the literatures where CW Ar⁺ lasers were used, a second harmonic (532 nm wavelength) Q-switch Nd:YAG laser was used for our experiments. The deposition process was conducted by laser-catalyzing of the polyimide surface and subsequent photothermal-accelerated reduction of copper-complex ions in an alkaline reducing environment. The characteristics of the deposited copper line were investigated in terms of laser beam scanning speed, and the number of scans. The surface morphology and chemical composition of the deposited copper were analyzed using field emission scanning electron microscope (FESEM) and energy dispersive spectrometer (EDX). The optimum processing conditions have been identified. The copper deposit was found to adhere well to the substrate.     

Spatial design matrices and associated quadratic forms: structure and properties

The paper provides significant simplifications and extensions of results obtained by Gorsich, Genton, and Strang (J. Multivariate Anal. 80 (2002) 138) on the structure of spatial design matrices. These are the matrices implicitly defined by quadratic forms that arise naturally in modelling intrinsically stationary and isotropic spatial processes. We give concise structural formulae for these matrices, and simple generating functions for them. The generating functions provide formulae for the cumulants of the quadratic forms of interest when the process is Gaussian, second-order stationary and isotropic. We use these to study the statistical properties of the associated quadratic forms, in particular those of the classical variogram estimator, under several assumptions about the actual variogram.     

An optodynamic method for the real-time determination of the depth of a laser-drilled hole

An experimental method for determining the real-time depth of laser-drilled holes is presented. The proposed method involves detecting the laser-induced optoacoustic waves generated during the interaction of the laser beam with the material. Our optodynamic study involved measuring the propagation times of these waves as they traveled through the material and analyzing their temporal behavior during the drilling process. The experimental observations revealed an exponential relationship between the propagation time of the longitudinal stress wave and the number of consecutive laser pulses. Received: 25 October 2001 / Accepted: 27 October 2001 / Published online: 20 December 2001     

Numerical solution of the three‐dimensional parabolic equation with an integral condition

Developement of numerical methods for obtaining approximate solutions to the three dimensional diffusion equation with an integral condition will be carried out. The numerical techniques discussed are based on the fully explicit (1,7) finite difference technique and the fully implicit (7,1) finite difference method and the (7,7) Crank‐Nicolson type finite difference formula. The new developed methods are tested on a problem. Truncation error analysis and numerical examples are used to illustrate the accuracy of the new algorithms. The results of numerical testing show that the numerical methods based on the finite difference techniques discussed in the present article produce good results. © 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Numer Methods Partial Differential Eq 18: 193–202, 2002; DOI 10.1002/num.1040     

Asymptotique de la norme $L^2$ d'un cycle géodésique dans les revêtements de congruence d'une variété hyperbolique arithmétique

Let M be an arithmetic hyperbolic manifold and be a codimension 1 geodesic cycle. In this paper, we study the asymptotic growth of the -norm of the lifts of F in the congruence tower above M. We obtain an explicit value for the growth rate of this norm. In particular, we provide a new proof of a celebrated result of Millson [Mi] on the homology of the arithmetic hyperbolic manifolds. The method is quite general and gives a new way of getting non zero homology classes in certain locally symmetric spaces. Received: 20 April 2001; in final form: 26 September 2001 / Published online: 28 February 2002     

Simultaneous Packing and Covering in the Euclidean Plane

 In this article we study the simultaneous packing and covering constants of two-dimensional centrally symmetric convex domains. Besides an identity result between translative case and lattice case and a general upper bound, exact values for some special domains are determined. Similar to Mahler and Reinhardt’s result about packing densities, we show that the simultaneous packing and covering constant of an octagon is larger than that of a circle. (Received 17 January 2001; in revised form 13 July 2001)     

Defect operators, defect functions and defect indices for analytic submodules

This paper mainly concerns defect operators and defect functions of Hardy submodules, Bergman submodules over the unit ball, and Hardy submodules over the polydisk. The defect operator (function) carries key information about operator theory (function theory) and structure of analytic submodules. The problem when a submodule has finite defect is attacked for both Hardy submodules and Bergman submodules. Our interest will be in submodules generated by polynomials. The reason for choosing such submodules is to understand the interaction of operator theory, function theory and algebraic geometry.