Plasma ball formation - an experimental technique to test radiative heat transfer models in non-equilibrium plasmas

This article shows that a recent discovery in the field of molecular plasma, called Plasma Ball Formation (PBF), could provide a new experimental technique for testing collisional radiative models in non-equilibrium plasmas. Moreover, PBF could open a way to measure the bulk viscosity under controlled conditions, in addition to the sound velocity, thus providing an excellent opportunity to improve models used in numerical simulations of hypersonic flows.