Description
Thunderstorm processes represent a challenge for numerical models, as they involvenumerous processes of various scales, and explosive events producing exponentially
increasing numbers of particles in a very short span of time. A phenomenon called a
Relativistic Runaway Electron Avalanche can occur under the right conditions, and lead to
the production of a Terrestrial Gamma-Ray Flash (TGF), spanning over tens of
microseconds, and during which up to 1017 electrons and photons are produced for the
most intense ones, the weaker ones still producing 1012 to 1015 energetic photons.
While Monte Carlo models are often used to simulate such processes, runtime typically
scales with particle number, which leads to poor performance without a way to limit the
number of particles computed. On the other hand, a fluid model may be adapted to deal
with a large particle densities, but it will struggle to deal with the extreme energies and
electric fields, and loses track of the physics of individual particles, which becomes
relevant when submitted to such extreme parameters.
In order to accurately and efficiently simulate all these processes, we are developing a
fully parallelized electrostatic 3-D hybrid model. The code is optimised for massively
parallel usage on Graphics Processing Units (GPUs), and uses the AMReX library, a
software framework for massively parallel, block-structured codes, allowing us to run in
parallel with implemented adaptive mesh refinement (AMR), which further improves the
accuracy of the model.
With this model, we are aiming at obtaining a better understanding of lightning processes
and TGFs, not only in the current Earth atmosphere, but also in the atmosphere of other
celestial bodies, and in mixtures likely to have existed in the environment of Primordial
Earth.
| Period | 17 Dec 2025 |
|---|---|
| Event title | AGU Fall Meeting 2025 |
| Event type | Conference |
| Location | New Orleans, United States, LouisianaShow on map |