Installation for Studying the Laboratory Analog of Ball Lightning

A spherical plasmoid is the result of a unique type of pulsed `Gatchina' discharge, in which a plasma clot grows out of the discharge and separates from the central electrode and its glow lasts in free flight for several hundred milliseconds without an external electrical power source before dissipating. In this work, an installation was created to study this type of discharge. Describes the basic units of the system. In addition, a number of experiments are described and a set of preliminary data is included to provide a basis from which to continue our research.