Actually, I don't do it full-time for various reasons. The topic is being researched by laboratories in "richer" countries. On the one hand, I don't want to brag about things I don't really know. On the other hand, it may be worth presenting this point of view on electrical discharges.
The phenomenon was discovered in the USA by Keneth Radford Shouders. Shoulders studied the impact of sparks on various materials, using an electron microscope and other devices. He described the history of his research in the book "EV - A Tale of Discovery". Shoulders discovered that during an electric discharge, an "active precursor" - an emission center with a very high concentration of electric charge - runs through the space between the cathode and the anode. It can be said that it "sows electrons" and ionizes the matter around it. This "precursor" leaves behind a "plasma tunnel" through which the spark current will then flow.
Research has shown that such a "precursor" consists of electrons. This would indicate that electrons in certain special cases are able to combine with each other to form an unstable cluster. Generally, when modeling space charge, it is assumed that electrons repel each other. Perhaps the Coulomb force does not work perfectly at very small distances.
It's about particle-wave dualism. It is said that the external photoelectric effect proves the corpuscular nature of the photon. If the energy of a photon is too low, it cannot remove an electron from the crystal. However, it turns out that the external photoelectric effect depends on the wave properties of the photon - on polarization. If the polarization is "transverse to the surface of the solid", then the electric field associated with the photon can extract the electron from solid state. If the electric field is parallel to the surface of a solid, the photoelectric effect does not occur. Such an experiment was carried out at the Maria Curie-Skłodowska University in Lublin. This shows that it is not that simple.
Perhaps there is a situation where electrons are too close to each other for repulsion to occur. Each photon has wave properties. If the distance between electrons is too small (smaller than the wavelength of the interaction photons), the photons cannot mediate in the transfer of repulsive interactions. Electron A emits a photon, but it cannot transfer momentum to electron B.
However, in the long run the cluster is unstable. It will eventually fall apart. Still, this concept is groundbreaking. Perhaps there are other phenomena in nature, not fully understood (e.g. ball lightning or other unusual phenomena in the sky described as something like UFOs), requiring additional laws of physics.
What is the truth? The founder of quantum electrodynamics (Richard Feynmann) did not want to agree with Shoulders about electron attraction. I am aware of this. In the USSR, similar studies were conducted (independently of Shoulders) and a more reasonable description was found (described below). Despite this, the results of Shoulders' research are intriguing and open up unique possibilities for using sparks. There are things in electron physics that are not fully described. Maybe electrons sticking together is an exaggeration, but how do you accurately measure the radius of an electron? There are different methods and they give different results. Maybe someone will solve this someday.
The phenomenon of explosive emission centers in discharges was also discovered later in the USSR (independently of Shoulders) - it was discovered by Gennady Mesyats. He called the particles ectons. Mesyats wrote publications on high impulse powers. A special institute of electronophysics was established to study the phenomenon (subordinated to the Russian Academy of Sciences).
Russian research group studies on a more explainable course of the phenomena. During a spark discharge on the cathode, a "micro-explosion" occurs. Instead, micro-fragments of the cathode material are released. The electrode is melted (it is boiling in some points). Liquid drops are ejected. From these fragments, ions, electrons, plasma are emitted under discharge conditions (EEE - Explosive Electron Emission). Perhaps thanks to better devices, it was possible to detect ions, which Shoulders had not noticed.
It examined discharges in order to induce a forced transition of the system to the lowest energy state. The goal was to burn radioactive waste (forcing nuclear transformation using a high-power spark discharge). From what I see on the Internet, there are already publications in reputable scientific publishers and patents in various countries. This may indicate the great potential of such research.
I do not recommend searching "shadow libraries" (copyright violation, etc.). All in all, the topic is difficult and probably not very well described.
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