Study Reveals How Simulations Help Explain Lightning’s Mysterious Origins

A recent study in Nature Physics reveals how ordinary ice can generate electricity, providing crucial insight into the origins of lightning.

Stony Brook University PhD student Anthony Mannino, working under the supervision of Professor Marivi Fernandez-Serra in the Department of Physics and Astronomy and the core faculty at the Institute for Advanced Computational Science (IACS), spearheaded the theoretical side of the project. It was discovered that ice exhibits strong flexoelectricity — an electromechanical effect that occurs when the material is bent.

The international collaboration was led experimentally by Professor Gustau Catalan and Xin Wen at the Institut Català de Nanociència i Nanotecnologia (ICN2) in Barcelona.

Using the Seawulf supercomputing cluster, Mannino performed large-scale quantum simulations that revealed how the surface of ice can undergo subtle ferroelectric ordering at low temperatures. This ordering amplifies the flexoelectric effect and explains how collisions between ice particles and graupel in thunderclouds can generate the massive charge separations that lead to lightning.

“Helping to facilitate an innovative discovery like the origin of lightning is exciting, extremely rewarding, and very much in keeping with the fundamental role of computation in contemporary science,” said Alan Calder, professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy and deputy director of the IACS. “As this study shows, with the combination of clever investigators and advanced computing the sky, or lightning shooting through it at least, is literally the limit.”

The Stony Brook contribution builds on more than a decade of research by the Fernandez-Serra group, which previously uncovered anomalous nuclear quantum effects in ice (Phys. Rev. Lett. 108, 193003 (2012)). That work looked to unravel a fundamental anomaly of water, and the new study continues this tradition by identifying a previously unknown electromechanical property of ice.

This looks to be an example of how advanced simulations and experiments complement each other. Anthony Mannino’s simulations performed in the Seawulf cluster connect the atomic-scale physics of ice to one of nature’s most dramatic macroscopic phenomena: lightning.

By bridging quantum theory, high-performance computing and atmospheric science, the Stony Brook team has helped explain a long-standing puzzle in cloud electrification — showcasing the university’s leadership in computational physics.

Mannino is a PhD student in both the Department of Physics and Astronomy and IACS. He was recruited by Stony Brook through the IACS Graduate Student Fellowship, which pays a National Science Foundation (NSF)-level stipend plus an allowance for research-related expenses including publication fees, equipment and conference attendance.

“We are very proud of this experiment–theory collaboration,” said Fernandez-Serra.”When our colleagues in Barcelona approached us with their remarkable results in search of theoretical support, we were initially skeptical that we could simulate such a complex system. But Anthony showed that the observed phase transition can be reproduced by combining simulations with a simple physical model — providing a clear explanation for experiments in a material as notoriously difficult to model as ice.”

The SeaWulf supercomputing cluster was funded by NSF (#1531492 and #2215987) and the Empire State Development’s Division of Science, Technology and Innovation (NYSTAR) with additional support from Stony Brook University.