Plasma instability in the front of ejected energetic electrons and Type III solar radiobursts

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Krasnoselskikh, Vladimir, Jebaraj, Immanuel Christopher, Cooper, Tom Robert Franck, Voschepynets, Andrii, de Wit, Thierry Dudok, Pulupa, Marc, Mozer, Forrest, Agapitov, Oleksiy, Balikhin, Michael, Bale, Stuart D.
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Krasnoselskikh, Vladimir
Jebaraj, Immanuel Christopher
Cooper, Tom Robert Franck
Voschepynets, Andrii
de Wit, Thierry Dudok
Pulupa, Marc
Mozer, Forrest
Agapitov, Oleksiy
Balikhin, Michael
Bale, Stuart D.
author_facet Krasnoselskikh, Vladimir
Jebaraj, Immanuel Christopher
Cooper, Tom Robert Franck
Voschepynets, Andrii
de Wit, Thierry Dudok
Pulupa, Marc
Mozer, Forrest
Agapitov, Oleksiy
Balikhin, Michael
Bale, Stuart D.
contents Type III radio bursts are a signature of the flux of near-relativistic electrons ejected during solar flares. These bursts are frequently observed by spacecraft such as the Parker Solar Probe. It is traditionally believed that these electron beams generate Langmuir waves through the two-stream instability, which are then converted into electromagnetic waves. In this study, we revise that model by examining how the electron distribution becomes truncated due to the "time-of-flight" effect as the beam travels through a randomly inhomogeneous, and gently varying solar-wind plasma. Rather than the two-stream instability, this truncation destabilizes the distribution and leads to the generation of Langmuir waves via a linear instability; we confine our analysis to this linear regime and do not take into account the back reaction of the generated Langmuir waves on the electron distribution, which is nonlinear. The instability grows until slower electrons arrive and dampen the waves. Our qualitative analysis shows that the resulting wave intensity growth and decay closely match the intensity-time profile of observed Type III radio bursts at the fundamental frequency, supporting this modified theory.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2507_08437
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Plasma instability in the front of ejected energetic electrons and Type III solar radiobursts
Krasnoselskikh, Vladimir
Jebaraj, Immanuel Christopher
Cooper, Tom Robert Franck
Voschepynets, Andrii
de Wit, Thierry Dudok
Pulupa, Marc
Mozer, Forrest
Agapitov, Oleksiy
Balikhin, Michael
Bale, Stuart D.
Solar and Stellar Astrophysics
High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena
Plasma Physics
Space Physics
Type III radio bursts are a signature of the flux of near-relativistic electrons ejected during solar flares. These bursts are frequently observed by spacecraft such as the Parker Solar Probe. It is traditionally believed that these electron beams generate Langmuir waves through the two-stream instability, which are then converted into electromagnetic waves. In this study, we revise that model by examining how the electron distribution becomes truncated due to the "time-of-flight" effect as the beam travels through a randomly inhomogeneous, and gently varying solar-wind plasma. Rather than the two-stream instability, this truncation destabilizes the distribution and leads to the generation of Langmuir waves via a linear instability; we confine our analysis to this linear regime and do not take into account the back reaction of the generated Langmuir waves on the electron distribution, which is nonlinear. The instability grows until slower electrons arrive and dampen the waves. Our qualitative analysis shows that the resulting wave intensity growth and decay closely match the intensity-time profile of observed Type III radio bursts at the fundamental frequency, supporting this modified theory.
title Plasma instability in the front of ejected energetic electrons and Type III solar radiobursts
topic Solar and Stellar Astrophysics
High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena
Plasma Physics
Space Physics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.08437