A new insight into the self-assemblage mechanism of complex space charge configurations in plasmas

Self-organization grounded on the spatial separation of the regions where the excitation and ionization cross section functions suddenly increase is identified to be at the origin of spatial and spatiotemporal patterns in plasma. Space-charge-limited flow and other challenging problems of Plasma Physics and, implicitly, of the Physics of Complexity are approached starting from a new point of view justified by recent experimental results. (author)