Probing Atmospheric Electric Fields in Thunderstorms through Radio Emission from Cosmic-Ray-Induced Air Showers

Abstract

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.

6 pages, 3 figures, accepted for publication in Physical Review Letters

References in corpus (5)

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Cited by in corpus (6)

• Radio detection of Cosmic-Ray Air Showers and High-Energy Neutrinos
• The radio emission pattern of air showers as measured with LOFAR - a tool for the reconstruction of the energy and the shower maximum
• Analytic calculation of radio emission from parameterized extensive air showers, a tool to extract shower parameters
• Final results of the LOPES radio interferometer for cosmic-ray air showers
• Determining Atmospheric Electric Fields using MGMR3D
• Status of air-shower measurements with sparse radio arrays (ARENA 2016)