Toward Controlled Ball Lightning in the Laboratory — Coherence Regimes, Failure Modes, and Experimental Architectures

Ball lightning remains one of the most persistent and controversial phenomena in atmospheric physics, with reported properties that resist explanation by any single thermal, chemical, or conventional plasma model. In this work, ball lightning is interpreted within a Rotor Dynamic framework as a metastable, mesoscopic coherence phenomenon governed by internal phase alignment and shear regulation rather than bulk equilibrium processes. The analysis introduces a coherence–shear stability criterion that separates a compact, phase-active core from a surrounding three-dimensional luminous sheath, naturally accounting for surface-localized emission, weak correlation between visible size and energy content, and threshold-like termination events. Observed diversity is organized into a small number of coherence regimes—field-dominant, matter-dominant, and hybrid—each with distinct signatures, failure modes, and environmental sensitivities. Based on this classification, specific diagnostic predictions are identified across electromagnetic, optical, acoustic, and residual channels, together with explicit falsification criteria. Finally, a set of controlled laboratory experimental architectures is proposed to reproducibly generate and study ball-lightning-like structures, shifting the problem from anecdotal observation to systematic experimental investigation grounded in coherence physics.