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Unveil the TGF-lightning relation with a large sample of TGFs detected by Insight-HXMT

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Abstract

Terrestrial gamma-ray flash (TGF) is intense and brief burst of gamma-rays originating in Earth’s atmosphere. In this work, with a large sample of TGF observed by the Insight-HXMT from June 22, 2017 to July 30, 2024 and lightning sferics detected by the world wide lightning location network (WWLLN), we systematically investigated the temporal, spatial, and energetic relationships between the TGF and lightning sferics. More sferics associated with TGF are revealed using a novel two-step analysis method. We find that TGF always occurs in the initial stage (about 5 to 20 ms) of a lightning process (lasting about 800 ms) and that there is significant deficit in the lightning sferic during about 30 s before the TGF time. Based on the sferic-TGF time offset and the sferics rate, we identify, for the first time, that TGF-associated sferics are composed of three components: simultaneous sferics, adjacent sferics, and follow-up sferics. Compared to the average energy of background sferics (∼2200 J), simultaneous sferics have much higher average energy (∼8300 J), while adjacent sferics (∼1700 J) and follow-up sferics (∼1300 J) are somewhat lower. Interestingly, we find that as TGF becomes shorter in duration, the median energy of the simultaneous sferics increases. Moreover, based on the distance distribution, we conclude that TGF and all three components of the associated sferics should happen in a small region in the thunderstorm. These findings refresh our understanding of the TGF-lightning relation and thus have important implications on the TGF and lightning production mechanisms.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Physics and Optoelectronics, Xiangtan University, Xiangtan, 411105, China

    Qibin Yi & Xuejuan Yang

  2. Key Laboratory of Particle Astrophysics, Institute of High Energy Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100049, China

    Qibin Yi, Haoxuan Guo, Shaolin Xiong, Xiaobo Li, Chengkui Li, Wangchen Xue, Jiacong Liu, Chao Zheng, Yanqiu Zhang, Chenwei Wang, Wenjun Tan, Yue Huang, Jinpeng Zhang, Peng Zhang, Wenlong Zhang, Shenglun Xie, Zhenghang Yu, Liming Song & Shuangnan Zhang

  3. Department of Nuclear Science and Technology, School of Energy and Power Engineering, Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an, 710049, China

    Haoxuan Guo & Qingmin Zhang

  4. School of Computer and Information, Dezhou University, Dezhou, 253023, China

    Yi Zhao

  5. School of Earth and Space Sciences, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, 230026, China

    Gaopeng Lu

  6. University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100049, China

    Wangchen Xue, Jiacong Liu, Chao Zheng, Yanqiu Zhang, Chenwei Wang, Wenjun Tan, Yue Huang, Jinpeng Zhang, Zhenghang Yu & Shuangnan Zhang

  7. College of Electronic and Information Engineering, Tongji University, Shanghai, 201804, China

    Peng Zhang

  8. School of Physics and Physical Engineering, Qufu Normal University, Qufu, 273165, China

    Wenlong Zhang

  9. Institute of Astrophysics, Central China Normal University, Wuhan, 430079, China

    Shenglun Xie

Authors
  1. Qibin Yi
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  2. Haoxuan Guo
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  3. Shaolin Xiong
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Shaolin Xiong.

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Conflict of interest The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Additional information

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 12273042), and the National Key R&D Program of China (Grant No. 2021YFA0718500). Yi Zhao apprecaites the support from the Science Research Program of Dezhou University (Grant No. 2024xjrc142). This work made use of data from the Insight-HXMT mission, funded by the CNSA and CAS. The authors wish to thank the World Wide Lightning Location Network (http://wwlln.net), a collaboration among over 50 universities and institutions, for providing the lightning location data used in this paper.

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Yi, Q., Guo, H., Xiong, S. et al. Unveil the TGF-lightning relation with a large sample of TGFs detected by Insight-HXMT. Sci. China Phys. Mech. Astron. 68, 281011 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11433-025-2674-5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11433-025-2674-5