Investigating Terrestrial Gamma Flash Production from Energetic Particle Acceleration in Lightning using TETRA-II

Intense millisecond-scale fluxes of gamma rays associated with terrestrial lightning (Terrestrial Gamma Flashes – TGFs) were discovered by NASA’s Compton Gamma Ray Observatory and have been observed, as well, by detectors on the AGILE and Fermi spacecraft up to 100 MeV energies. These observations indicate that electrons are accelerated to very high energies by the electric fields in lightning, producing showers that radiate high fluxes of x-rays and gamma rays via bremsstrahlung and produce positrons via pair production. The currents associated with these electromagnetic showers are a significant but not yet completely understood component of the electric structure of the thunderstorms. Lightning is a major concern for NASA, in part because of the potential damage due to strikes to space vehicles at launch and in protecting launch and assembly infrastructure. Lightning is also the main science target of NASA’s space-based Lightning Imaging Sensor (LIS) aboard the EOS TRMM satellite and the upcoming LIS instrument scheduled to be launched to the International Space Station in 2016. Further, understanding the details of TGF production and its relationship to the energetic particle “lightning” accelerator are a high priority science topic for the Fermi gamma ray observatory. This aspect of the project is best aligned with NASA Strategic Goal 2 (Advance Understanding of Earth) and Objective 2.2 (Advance knowledge of Earth as a system to meet the challenges of environmental change, and to improve life on our planet.) from the 2014 NASA Strategic Plan. A first, albeit limited, catalog of TGFs observed at ground level has now been published by our Louisiana State University (LSU) group. Ground-based observations of nearby thunderstorms provide a new capability for associating the high energy emission with the detailed structure of the storm observed by local radar and correlating observations with Earth-orbiting gamma ray detectors. TETRA-II (the TGF and Energetic Thunderstorm Rooftop Array II) is a new experiment, currently under construction in collaboration with the University of Puerto Rico – Bayamón using ’seed‘ support from the Louisiana Board of Regents and Louisiana Space Grant Consortium, involving expanded, higher resolution, detector arrays to be deployed in Puerto Rico and Jamaica where lightning activity is extremely high and where the prime orbiting TGF detector (the Gamma ray Burst Monitor on NASA’s Fermi mission – GBM) also indicates that the rate of TGFs is high. The goal of this proposal is to expand the project to include Climatology and Weather Aspects, involve Southern University and Xavier University (two HBCUs), and commission/ operate the new arrays as well as analyze the resulting data. The research involves measuring TGFs from the ground, complementing observations from the NASA Fermi mission, and analyzing/modeling the physical processes by high energy astrophysicists, climatologists, thunderstorm researchers, electrical engineers, and computer scientists. In addition to first-rate science, the project will build research infrastructure at three minority institutions in two EPSCoR jurisdictions and train underserved minority students. This aspect of the project is aligned with NASA 2014 Strategic Plan objectives 2.4 (Advance the Nation’s STEM education and workforce pipeline) and 3.1 (Attract and advance a highly skilled, competent, and diverse workforce.) The overall product from this proposed project will be new understanding of the formation and evolution of lightning-producing storms that can become a part of climate models and predictive systems.

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