Cellular automaton modeling of mesospheric optical emissions: Sprites

Abstract

This paper presents a new attempt to model two-dimensional mesospheric optical emissions named sprites with the use of a cellular automaton network. A large-scale model of sprites based on the phenomenological percolation-like probabilistic approach is developed to model streamer discharges in sprites. It is shown that a sprite is a self-affine structure rather than a simple fractal one, and that this self-affine structure is tightly connected with directed percolation phenomena. The system is found to evolve in the vicinity of the percolation threshold, which results in a wide variety of sprite characteristics even under similar initial conditions. The approach developed allows us to estimate a maximum size of the discharge pattern to be formed.