Abstract
A role of radial corona current in a lightning discharge is discussed in
the paper. It is shown that the corona current concept previously
introduced by Cooray for lightning return stroke models of
distributed-current-source (DCS) type, and later, by Maslowski and Rakov
for lumped-current-source (LCS) type models enables to show duality
between these two types of models. Further, it is demonstrated that the
corona current is useful during consideration of dynamics of the
lightning-channel corona sheath. As an example of application of presented
approach a relaxation model of charge motion in the corona sheath is
analysed together with plots which show the rate of expansion and
shrinkage of the lightning corona sheath on both microsecond and
millisecond time scales.
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