Thèse CIFRE Dark discharge (M/F)

Organisation/Company CNRS Department Laboratoire de Physique des Gaz et des Plasmas Research Field Mathematics History » History of science Researcher Profile First Stage Researcher (R1) Application Deadline 29 Aug 2026 - 00:00 (UTC) Country France Type of Contract Temporary Job Status Full-time Hours Per Week 35 Offer Starting Date 1 Oct 2026 Is the job funded through the EU Research Framework Programme? Not funded by a EU programme Is the Job related to staff position within a Research Infrastructure? No

Offer Description

The dark discharges have been discovered and studied at the begining of the research in ionized gases by Townsend. Nowadays the principle of these discharge sis well understood. However, the fast and high rate multiplication of the charge under an UV radiation is a serious issue for some technological applications.The huge progresses made in material science, numerical modeling and vacuum technologies open a wide field for revisiting this type of discharge and enhance its performances. The a comprehensive understanding of the undergoing physics should allow the proposal of a novel arrangement of this kind of system.

Electric discharges generally operate in three modes: at low current, they are called dark discharges; at medium current, they are called normal discharges; and at very high current, they are referred to as electric arcs.Dark discharges—which are the focus of this thesis—are also known as self-sustaining discharges. Thus, in the presence of a flux of ultraviolet photons, the discharge current can increase significantly.It is precisely this phenomenon that is going to be investigated and will be the subject of experiments, as well as the development of models to explain their behavior. The model will be developed in Saclay—at the Laboratory of Gas and Plasma Physics (LPGP)—and its validation will be carried out through direct comparison with experimental results obtained at the LPGP in collaboration with the SAFRAN group.