Towards understanding greenhouse gas production from terrestrial gamma-ray flashes

Lightning creates bursts of X- and gamma-ray flashes called Terrestrial Gamma-ray Flashes (TGFs), with single photon energies of up to 40 MeV. When released into the atmosphere, these energetic photons interact with air molecules through dissociation, ionization, excitation, Compton scattering, and pair production, chemically activating Earth's atmosphere. The activated molecules will then recombine in accordance with the principle of minimal Gibbs free energy and maximal entropy to reach an equilibrium state. Our objective is to identify and quantify the impact of this process on the production of greenhouse gases. We present a Monte Carlo particle model that can simulate the motion and interaction of electrons and photons with energies ranging from 0.1 eV to 100 MeV. When tracing electrons and photons through the atmosphere, we keep track of dissociated, excited, and ionized air constituents. We will present the rate coefficients of these processes and the spatial distribution of the activated molecules. This will lay the further basis for understanding the chemical processes leading to the production of greenhouse gases.