Observational Characteristics of Langmuir Turbulence Associated with Solar Type III Radio Bursts

Abstract:

Solar flares present the most dramatic energy releases from the Sun. The solar flares accelerate electrons, which form bump-on-tail distributions, and excite electrostatic waves called Langmuir waves, which are subsequently converted into escaping radiation at the fundamental and second harmonic of the electron plasma frequency by some nonlinear processes. These radio emissions are called the type III radio bursts. The sources of these bursts represent natural laboratories of beam-plasma systems. The WAVES experiment on the STEREO spacecraft contains an improved Time Domain Sampler (TDS), improved over that of all similar high time resolution receivers flown in earlier spacecraft. It is primarily intended for the study of Langmuir waves. These in situ high time resolution wave measurements enable us to identify and understand the physical processes associated with beam-plasma systems, as well as for conversion of Langmuir waves into escaping radiation at the fundamental and second harmonic of the electron plasma frequency. The waveforms captured by the TDS usually contain a variety of distortions caused by various nonlinear processes. The normalized peak intensities, wave numbers and spectral widths of these wave packets determine the nonlinear processes, which control the evolution of these wave packets. We have analyzed the in situ high time resolution measurements of Langmuir wave packets and determined their three dimensional relative peak intensities, spectral components and spectral widths. Using the frequency drifts of the type III bursts, we have estimated the velocities of the electron beams which in turn yielded the corresponding wave numbers. We will present the distributions of these important physical quantities and their implications for the theoretical models.