The 2009 Fermi Symposium

Fermi-GBM Observations of Terrestrial Gamma-ray Flashes

Michael Briggs, UA Huntsville

Abstract:

During its first 14 months of operation, GBM has detected 17 Terrestrial Gamma Flashes (TGFs). Although GBM was designed to observe GRBs, it is well suited for observing TGFs, with the ability to process high count rates, fine temporal resolution and large effective area to ∼40 MeV. We report new observations on the pulse profiles and spectra of TGFs, and on the results of correlating the times of GBM TGFs with lightning stroke times determined with the World Wide Lightning Location Network (WWLLN).