Constraining spectral models of a terrestrial gamma-ray flash from a
terrestrial electron beam observation by the Atmosphere-Space
Interactions Monitor
Abstract
Terrestrial Gamma-ray Flashes (TGFs) are short flashes of high energy
photons, produced by thunderstorms. When interacting with the
atmosphere, they produce relativistic electrons and positrons, and a
part gets bounded to geomagnetic field lines and travels large distances
in space. This phenomenon is called a Terrestrial Electron Beam (TEB).
The Atmosphere-Space Interactions Monitor (ASIM) mounted on-board the
International Space Station detected a new TEB event on March 24, 2019,
originating from the tropical cyclone Johanina. Using ASIM’s low energy
detector, the TEB energy spectrum is resolved down to 50 keV. We provide
a method to constrain the TGF source spectrum based on the detected TEB
spectrum. Applied to this event, it shows that only fully developed RREA
spectra are compatible with the observation. More specifically, assuming
a TGF spectrum ∝ 1/E exp(-E/ε), the compatible models have ε ≥ 6.5 MeV
(E is the photon energy and ε is the cut-off energy). We could not
exclude models with ε of 8 and 10 MeV.