Nanosecond Enhancements of the Atmospheric Electron Density by Extensive Air Showers

Abstract:

As is well known a sufficient density of free electrons and strong electric fields are the basic requirements to start any electrical discharge. In the context of thunderstorm discharges it has become clear that in addition droplets and or ice particles are required to enhance the electric field to values above breakdown. In our recent study [1] we have shown that these three ingredients have to interplay to allow for lightning inception, triggered by an extensive air shower event. The extensive air showers are a very stochastic natural phenomenon, creating highly coherent sub-nanosecond enhancements of the atmospheric electron density.

Predicting these electron density enhancements accurately one has to take the uncertainty of the input variables into account. For this study we use the initial energy, inclination and altitude of first interaction, which will influence the evolution of the shower significantly. To this end, we use the stochastic collocation method, [2] to post-process our detailed Monte Carlo extensive air shower simulations, done with the CORSIKA [3] software package, which provides an efficient and elegant way to determine the distribution of the atmospheric electron density enhancements.

[1] Dubinova, A., Rutjes, C., Ebert, E., Buitink, S., Scholten, O., and Trinh, G. T. N. "Prediction of Lightning Inception by Large Ice Particles and Extensive Air Showers." PRL 115 015002 (2015)
[2] G.J.A. Loeven, J.A.S. Witteveen, H. Bijl, Probabilistic collocation: an efficient nonintrusive approach for arbitrarily distributed parametric uncertainties, 45th AIAA Aerospace Sciences Meeting, Reno, Nevada, 2007, AIAA-2007-317
[3] Heck, Dieter, et al. CORSIKA: A Monte Carlo code to simulate extensive air showers. No. FZKA-6019. 1998.