Time resolved 3Dinterferometric imaging of a section of a negative leader with LOFAR

TL;DR

This paper introduces a 3D interferometric imaging method using LOFAR to analyze lightning, revealing detailed structures and dynamics of negative leaders and coronal flashes with high spatial and temporal resolution.

Contribution

The paper presents a novel 3D interferometric beamforming technique for lightning imaging with LOFAR, enabling detailed visualization of leader structures and dynamics at meter scales.

Findings

Imaging of negative leaders with meter-scale resolution.

Observation of coronal flashes during stepping processes.

VHF emission intensity follows a power-law over four orders of magnitude.

Abstract

We have developed a three dimensional (3D) interferometric beamforming technique for imaging lightning flashes using Very-High Frequency (VHF) radio data recorded from several hundreds antennas with baselines up to 100~km as offered by the Low Frequency Array (LOFAR). The long baselines allow us to distinguish fine structures on the scale of meters while the large number of antennas allow us to observe processes that radiate at the same intensity as the background when using a time resolution that is close to the impulse-response time of the system, 100~ns. The new beamforming imaging technique is complementary to our existing impulsive imaging technique. We apply this new tool to the imaging of a four stepped negative leaders in two flashes. For one flash, we observe the dynamics of coronal flashes that are emitted in the stepping process. Additionally, we show that the intensity emitted in VHF during the stepping process follows a power-law over 4 orders of magnitude in intensity for four leaders in two different lightning storms.