TGF PULSE AND RADIO PROPERTIES DETECTED AT CLOSE RANGE

Abstract:

Terrestrial Gamma-ray Flashes (TGFs) are short (10s to 100s of us) energetic (100s to 10000s of keV) discharges originating from the tops of thunderclouds. TGFs have long been associated with radio pulses detected at VLF receivers, but recent evidence indicates that the radio pulse may be from the TGF itself, rather than from a stroke or pulse that either precedes or follows the TGFs.

Unfortunately, subionospheric propagation of VLF/LF smooths the radio pulse and destroys in particular the high frequency content, so that the radio signal looks similar to those from ordinary lightning strokes.

Since TGFs have a broad range of durations as detected by satellites, these variations should be apparent in the LF radio pulse from the TGF, which may confirm that the TGF is the dominant source of the associated radio pulse and identify a distinguishing feature of TGF-associated pulses.

We report on an effort to detect and characterize the LF radio pulses associated with TGFs at close range (<1000 km) with a high sensitivity LF receiver in the Caribbean. This requires some luck and time since TGFs, at least those detectable by satellites, are not especially common. We directly compare the temporal shape of the TGF source to the radio source, after accounting for dead time and Compton scattering to interpret the satellite TGF data, as well as propagation of the LF pulse along the ground to the receiver.