Cosmic rays as probes of atmospheric electric fields

Abstract:

Energetic cosmic rays impinging on the atmosphere create a particle avalanche called an extensive air shower. In the leading plasma of this shower electric currents are induced that generate radio waves which have been detected with LOFAR, a large and dense array of simple antennas primarily developed for radio-astronomy observations.

LOFAR has observed air showers under fair-weather conditions as well as under atmospheric conditions where thunderstorms occur. For air showers under fair-weather conditions the intensity as well as the polarization of the radio emission can be understood rather accurately from the present models.

For air showers measured under thunderstorm conditions we observe large differences in the intensity and polarization patterns from the fair weather models. We will show that the linear as well as the circular polarization of the radio waves carry clear information on the orientation of the electric fields at different heights in the thunderstorm clouds. We will show for the first time that the circular polarization of the radio waves tells about the change of orientation of the fields with altitude. We will show that from the measured data at LOFAR the thunderstorm electric fields can be reconstructed.

We thus have established the measurement of radio emission from extensive air showers induced by cosmic rays as a new tool to probe the atmospheric electric fields present in thunderclouds in a non-intrusive way.