Gamma-ray glows and terrestrial gamma-ray flashes produced by thunderstorm electrification without lightning 

Abstract

Terrestrial gamma-ray flashes (TGFs), powerful bursts of gamma-rays produced within our atmosphere, often occur in association with lightning. However, the mechanisms for generating the large number of runaway electrons required to account for the TGF luminosities remain uncertain. For example, TGFs might be produced by cold-runaway electron production from streamer heads and/or leader tips in the high-field regions near lightning, or TGFs might be produced by the self-sustained production of runaway electrons by relativistic feedback involving backward propagating runaway positrons and backscattered x-rays. Because both mechanisms could possibly occur in the presence of lightning leaders, it has been challenging to test which TGF production mechanisms are important. In this work, detailed simulations are used to test whether TGFs may be produced by thunderstorm electrification alone, without the presence if lightning. It is found that rapid thunderstorm charging may first produce strong gamma-ray glows, followed by large pulses of gamma-rays, followed by multi-pulsed TGFs similar to the TGFs first observed by CGRO/BATSE. Furthermore, the ionization produced by the high-energy particles partially discharges the electric field in some regions while amplifying the field in other regions, potentially allowing for the initiation of narrow bipolar events (NBEs) and/or lightning. If confirmed, such sequence of events would be strong evidence for the relativistic feedback mechanism.