Langmuir Wave Electric Fields Induced by Electron Beams in the Heliosphere

Abstract

Solar electron beams responsible for type III radio emission generate Langmuir waves as they propagate out from the Sun. The Langmuir waves are observed via in-situ electric field measurements. These Langmuir waves are not smoothly distributed but occur in discrete clumps, commonly attributed to the turbulent nature of the solar wind electron density. Exactly how the density turbulence modulates the Langmuir wave electric fields is understood only qualitatively. Using weak turbulence simulations, we investigate how solar wind density turbulence changes the probability distribution functions, mean value and variance of the beam-driven electric field distributions. Simulations show rather complicated forms of the distribution that are dependent upon how the electric fields are sampled. Generally the higher magnitude of density fluctuations reduce the mean and increase the variance of the distribution in a consistent manor to the predictions from resonance broadening by density fluctuations. We also demonstrate how the properties of the electric field distribution should vary radially from the Sun to the Earth and provide a numerical prediction for the in-situ measurements of the upcoming Solar Orbiter and Solar Probe Plus spacecraft.

14 pages, 11 figures, published in Astronomy and Astrophysics

References in corpus (12)

• Dynamics of electron beams in the solar corona plasma with density fluctuations
• Large scale simulations of solar type III radio bursts: flux density, drift rate, duration and bandwidth
• Dynamics of electron beams in the inhomogeneous solar corona plasma
• Onsets and spectra of impulsive solar energetic electron events observed near the Earth
• An alternative to the plasma emission model: Particle-In-Cell, self-consistent electromagnetic wave emission simulations of solar type III radio bursts
• Evolution of the Solar Flare Energetic Electrons in the Inhomogeneous Inner Heliosphere
• Statistical Survey of Type III Radio Bursts at Long Wavelengths Observed by the Solar TErrestrial RElations Observatory (STEREO)/Waves Instruments: Radio Flux Density Variations with Frequency
• The Low-High-Low Trend of Type III Radio Burst Starting Frequencies and Solar Flare Hard X-rays
• Numerical consideration of quasilinear electron cloud dynamics in plasma
• Vlasov-Poisson simulations of electrostatic parametric instability for localized Langmuir wave packets in the solar wind
• Stopping Frequency of Type III Solar Radio Bursts in Expanding Magnetic Flux Tubes
• Resonance broadening due to particle scattering and mode-coupling in the quasi-linear relaxation of electron beams

Cited by in corpus (8)

• Fine structure of type III solar radio bursts from Langmuir wave motion in turbulent plasma
• A Fokker-Planck Framework for Studying the Diffusion of Radio Burst Waves in the Solar Corona
• Simulation of plasma emission in magnetized plasmas
• Radio Burst from a Stellar Coronal Mass Ejection
• CoSEE-Cat: A Comprehensive Solar Energetic Electron event Catalogue obtained from combined in situ and remote-sensing observations from Solar Orbiter -- Catalogue description and first statistical results
• Estimating the total energy content in escaping accelerated solar electron beams
• Observations of shock propagation through turbulent plasma in the solar corona
• Single-Mode Wave Decay