The strange characteristics of ball lightning are considered as a question hard to explain. In order to solve the problem, in this paper a complete model of plasma vortex is presented for the ball lightning. By ideal ...The strange characteristics of ball lightning are considered as a question hard to explain. In order to solve the problem, in this paper a complete model of plasma vortex is presented for the ball lightning. By ideal MHD equations, through imposing disturbance to plasma column, the possibility of sausage and kink instability of the lightning channel is analyzed from the perspective the minimum potential energy. The conclusion is that the kink instability （m = 1） is most prone to occur. And when instability occurs, because of the difference of the magnetic field in the twisted area, the magnetic pressure makes the trend further and therefore forming the plasma vortex that may eventually turn into ball lightning if the energy of the vortex is large enough. The existence of the vortex makes ball lightning have a short period of time stability. By the proposed model, the ball lightning features that are hard to understand in the past are explained. In this paper, the reason for bead lightning is also explained from the perspective of the sausage instability.展开更多
文摘The strange characteristics of ball lightning are considered as a question hard to explain. In order to solve the problem, in this paper a complete model of plasma vortex is presented for the ball lightning. By ideal MHD equations, through imposing disturbance to plasma column, the possibility of sausage and kink instability of the lightning channel is analyzed from the perspective the minimum potential energy. The conclusion is that the kink instability （m = 1） is most prone to occur. And when instability occurs, because of the difference of the magnetic field in the twisted area, the magnetic pressure makes the trend further and therefore forming the plasma vortex that may eventually turn into ball lightning if the energy of the vortex is large enough. The existence of the vortex makes ball lightning have a short period of time stability. By the proposed model, the ball lightning features that are hard to understand in the past are explained. In this paper, the reason for bead lightning is also explained from the perspective of the sausage instability.
