Evaluation of Monte Carlo tools for high-energy atmospheric physics II: relativistic runaway electron avalanches

Sarria, David; Rutjes, Casper; Diniz, Gabriel; Luque, Alejandro; Ihaddadene, Kevin M. A.; Dwyer, Joseph R.; Østgaard, Nikolai; Skeltved, Alexander B.; Ferreira, Ivan S.; Ebert, Ute

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-11-4515-2018

Articles | Volume 11, issue 11

https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-11-4515-2018

© Author(s) 2018. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-11-4515-2018

© Author(s) 2018. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 11, issue 11

Model evaluation paper

|

13 Nov 2018

Model evaluation paper |

| 13 Nov 2018

Evaluation of Monte Carlo tools for high-energy atmospheric physics II: relativistic runaway electron avalanches

David Sarria, Casper Rutjes, Gabriel Diniz, Alejandro Luque, Kevin M. A. Ihaddadene, Joseph R. Dwyer, Nikolai Østgaard, Alexander B. Skeltved, Ivan S. Ferreira, and Ute Ebert

Supplement

https://doi.org/10.5194/gmd-11-4515-2018-supplement

Data sets

Relativistic Runaway Ionization Fronts A. Luque https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.112.045003

Dataset used in the Article ``Evaluation of Monte Carlo tools for high-energy atmospheric physics II: relativistic runaway electron avalanches'' (Version 1) D. Sarria https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.1475209

MATLAB scripts for processing the dataset ``Full RREA Dataset'' (Version 1) D. Sarria https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.1475245

Probability Evaluation of Relativistic Runaway Electron Avalanches (RREA) (GEANT4 based source code) D. Sarria https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.1475231

Characterization of Relativistic Runaway Electron Avalanches (RREA) (GEANT4 based source code) (Version 1) D. Sarria https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.1475220

Short summary

We evaluate three models (Geant4, REAM, GRRR) used in the field of high-energy atmospheric physics that are able to simulate relativistic runaway electron avalanches. Several models have been used by the community, but there was, up until now, no study evaluating their consistency in this context. We conclude that there are no major differences to report, and we discuss minor ones. We also provide advice on how to properly set up the general purpose code (Geant4) in this context.