Has anyone heard of 'ectons' (parts of electrons that fly off in an arc discharge)?

[Chris Bradley]

Is this for real?

"The ecton mechanism of unipolar arcing in magnetic confinement fusion devices"

http://iopscience.iop.org/0029-5515/50/ ... 125004.pdf

This paper has appeared in Dec edition of the IOP/IAEA publication 'Nuclear Fusion'. The start of the abstract reads;

"It has been shown that the source of current and erosion plasma in a unipolar arc is explosive electron emission, which occurs as ejection of individual portions of electrons named ectons. This phenomenon is responsible for the numerous microcraters left by unipolar arcs on metal surfaces."

(A small entry on wiki says "An ecton consists of individual portions of electrons (10^11– 10^12 particles). The formation time is of the order of nanoseconds.")

[JohnCuthbert]

They are bunches of electrons, rather than bits of them.
Still a weird phenomenon, but we are used to weird things.

[David Rosignoli]

Chris,

This has been reported in the literature (and even in the fusor list) under different names since at least the 1980s as Electrum Validum, Charge clusters, Ectons, or EVOs (exotic vacuum objects). The former have been described by Ken Shoulders. I don't know if Ken is the first to report the effect, but he is one of the first to describe it in detail and apply for a patent on its creation. See US patents 5018180, 5054046, 5054047, 5123039, 5148461.

Is it real? The effects are real - i.e., punching holes in materials and making explosive depressions in dielectric materials. The question is how to properly explain the effect. The large quantity of charge in a single cluster (10^14 electrons I think I saw somewhere) is in need of an adequate explanation, if indeed a charge cluster is being generated. Theories abound in this area. (Side note - cold fusion advocates have used this effect as attempting to explain fusion by dragging positive nuclei towards each other due to the large coulombic forces involved.)

Creating the effect seems relatively cheap and easy. Analyzing them to any reasonable degree is considerably more expensive and tricky (for example SEM traces).

Dave

[Chris Bradley]

Thanks for correcting my understanding, guys. OK, so this chap's english is better than my russian (!), though I was confused by the term 'portions of electrons'. I was a bit slow this morning to pick up on it meaning 'cluster' of electrons. Sorry. But as mentioned, still very interesting from a 'discharge science' point of view.

[DaveC]

When I was doing partial discharge measurements during dielectric aging studies, we would sometimes measure "discharges" that were in the tens of femto-coulomb range, which were well below the level Townsend gas avalanches required. We never were able to unambiguously identify a process.

But these current bursts (which incidentally did lead to cavity erosion in dielectrics) were more like 1E4 to 1E5 electronic charges, not 1E14. I would be more inclined to expect ion clusters than electron "clusters" - but either requires the binding mechanism explained.

With metals, a sputtered globule could hold pico coulombs of charge, assuming the process was sufficiently energetic.


Dave Cooper

[Richard Hull]

Try searching "Trichel pulses". Researched in the 30's and far more studied today, these are interesting tiny bursts that astound and have many explanations profered.

Most often seen in corona, but often in any system under electrical tension.

I did some brief studies of them during my Tesla Coiling days.

Richard Hull