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Register a new userProbing Atmospheric Electric Fields in Thunderstorms through Radio Emission from Cosmic-Ray-Induced Air Showers
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We present measurements of radio emission from cosmic ray air showers that took place during thunderstorms. The intensity and polarization patterns of these air showers are radically different from those measured during fair-weather conditions. With the use of a simple two-layer model for the atmospheric electric field, these patterns can be well reproduced by state-of-the-art simulation codes. This in turn provides a novel way to study atmospheric electric fields.
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We study the effect of atmospheric electric fields on the radio pulse emitted by cosmic ray air showers. Under fair weather conditions the dominant part of the radio emission is driven by the geomagnetic field. When the shower charges are accelerated and deflected in an electric field additional radiation is emitted. We simulate this effect with the Monte Carlo code REAS2, using CORSIKA-simulated showers as input. In both codes a routine has been implemented that treats the effect of the electric field on the shower particles. We find that the radio pulse is significantly altered in background fields of the order of ~100 V/cm and higher. Practically, this means that air showers passing through thunderstorms emit radio pulses that are not a reliable measure for the shower energy. Under other weather circumstances significant electric field effects are expected to occur rarely, but nimbostratus clouds can harbor fields that are large enough. In general, the contribution of the electric field to the radio pulse has polarization properties that are different from the geomagnetic pulse. In order to filter out radio pulses that have been affected by electric field effects, radio air shower experiments should keep weather information and perform full polarization measurements of the radio signal.
Cosmic ray air showers produce radio emission, consisting in large part of geosynchrotron emission. Since the radiation mechanism is based on particle acceleration, the atmospheric electric field can play an important role. Especially inside thunderclouds large electric fields can be present. We examine the contribution of an electric field to the emission mechanism theoretically and experimentally. Two mechanisms of amplification of radio emission are considered: the acceleration radiation of the shower particles and the radiation from the current that is produced by ionization electrons moving in the electric field. We selected and evaluated LOPES data recorded during thunderstorms, periods of heavy cloudiness and periods of cloudless weather. We find that during thunderstorms the radio emission can be strongly enhanced. No amplified pulses were found during periods of cloudless sky or heavy cloudiness, suggesting that the electric field effect for radio air shower measurements can be safely ignored during non-thunderstorm conditions.
We have developed a code that semi-analytically calculates the radio footprint (intensity and polarization) of an extensive air shower subject to atmospheric electric fields. This can be used to reconstruct the height dependence of atmospheric electric field from the measured radio footprint. The various parameterizations of the spatial extent of the induced currents are based on the results of Monte-Carlo shower simulations. The calculated radio footprints agree well with microscopic CoREAS simulations.
The emission of radio waves from air showers has been attributed to the so-called geomagnetic emission process. At frequencies around 50 MHz this process leads to coherent radiation which can be observed with rather simple setups. The direction of the electric field induced by this emission process depends only on the local magnetic field vector and on the incoming direction of the air shower. We report on measurements of the electric field vector where, in addition to this geomagnetic component, another component has been observed which cannot be described by the geomagnetic emission process. The data provide strong evidence that the other electric field component is polarized radially with respect to the shower axis, in agreement with predictions made by Askaryan who described radio emission from particle showers due to a negative charge-excess in the front of the shower. Our results are compared to calculations which include the radiation mechanism induced by this charge-excess process.
The new setup of the CODALEMA experiment installed at the Radio Observatory in Nancay, France, is described. It includes broadband active dipole antennas and an extended and upgraded particle detector array. The latter gives access to the air shower energy, allowing us to compute the efficiency of the radio array as a function of energy. We also observe a large asymmetry in counting rates between showers coming from the North and the South in spite of the symmetry of the detector. The observed asymmetry can be interpreted as a signature of the geomagnetic origin of the air shower radio emission. A simple linear dependence of the electric field with respect to vxB is used which reproduces the angular dependencies of the number of radio events and their electric polarity.
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