Pattern formation and dynamics of plasma filaments in dielectric barrier discharges

Dielectric barrier discharges (DBDs) operating in a transient glow discharge regime offer a large variety of self-organized filamentary static or dynamical structures and constitute an excellent physical system for the study of nonlinear dynamics and pattern formation. The plasma filaments of DBDs can exhibit particle-like behavior, with motion, generation, annihilation, and scattering as well as collective effects leading to self-organized structures (hexagons, stripes, concentric rings, spirals, etc) that are typical of reaction–diffusion systems. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the detailed physics of pattern formation in DBDs on the basis of numerical fluid simulations and experiments in order to provide a deeper understanding of the nonlinear mechanisms responsible for the self-organization and dynamics of filaments.