On the Self‐Quenching of Relativistic Runaway Electron Avalanches Producing Terrestrial Gamma Ray Flashes

Abstract

Terrestrial gamma ray flashes (TGFs) are short bursts of gamma rays occurring during thunderstorms. They are believed to be produced by relativistic runaway electron avalanches (RREAs). It is usually admitted that the number of high‐energy electrons produced in the brightest TGFs remains mostly confined within a range from 1017 to 1019. To understand the constraints in the development of RREAs, we perform self‐consistent simulations using a newly developed model with a finite acceleration region and various injection rates. We find that RREAs should naturally self‐quench for a fixed total number of runaway electrons, and hence a fixed number of bremsstrahlung photons. From the idea that TGF sources quench themselves, we derive a simple equation controlling the total number of runaway electrons. In this framework, the existence of a saturation in the electron density discovered in a previous work places a lower limit on TGF durations.