A study published in Nature Physics has shed light on how ordinary ice can generate electricity, offering new understanding of the origins of lightning. The research involved a collaboration between Stony Brook University and the Institut Català de Nanociència i Nanotecnologia (ICN2) in Barcelona.
Anthony Mannino, a PhD student at Stony Brook University’s Department of Physics and Astronomy and the Institute for Advanced Computational Science (IACS), led the theoretical aspect of the project under Professor Marivi Fernandez-Serra. The study found that ice demonstrates strong flexoelectricity, an effect where bending the material creates an electric charge.
The experimental work was directed by Professor Gustau Catalan and Xin Wen at ICN2. Using Stony Brook’s Seawulf supercomputing cluster, Mannino ran quantum simulations showing that at low temperatures, the surface of ice can experience ferroelectric ordering. This ordering increases the flexoelectric effect, explaining how collisions between ice particles and graupel within thunderclouds may lead to large charge separations—a key factor in lightning formation.
Alan Calder, professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy and deputy director of IACS at Stony Brook University, commented: “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. 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 findings continue over a decade of research by Fernandez-Serra’s group into unusual properties of water and ice. Previous studies by this team explored nuclear quantum effects in ice to explain anomalies observed in water.
The collaboration illustrates how advanced computer simulations can complement experimental results. Mannino’s work connected atomic-scale physics to large-scale natural events such as lightning.
By combining quantum theory with high-performance computing and atmospheric science expertise, researchers from Stony Brook have contributed to resolving longstanding questions about cloud electrification processes.
Mannino participates in both physics and computational science programs at Stony Brook University. He joined through an IACS Graduate Student Fellowship that provides funding comparable to National Science Foundation stipends along with support for research expenses including conference travel.
Fernandez-Serra said: “We are very proud of this experiment–theory collaboration. 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.”
Funding for the SeaWulf supercomputing cluster came from multiple sources including two National Science Foundation grants (#1531492 and #2215987) as well as New York State’s Empire State Development Division of Science, Technology and Innovation (NYSTAR), supported further by Stony Brook University.