Wave Excitation by Energetic Ring-distributed Electron Beams in the Solar Corona

Abstract

Abstract We analyzed properties of waves excited by mildly relativistic electron beams propagating along the magnetic field with a ring-shape perpendicular momentum distribution in neutral and current-free solar coronal plasmas. These plasmas are subject to both the beam and the electron cyclotron maser instabilities driven by the positive momentum gradients of the ring-beam electron distribution in the directions parallel and perpendicular to the ambient magnetic field, respectively. To explore the related kinetic processes self-consistently, 2.5D fully kinetic particle-in-cell simulations were carried out. To quantify excited wave properties in different coronal conditions, we investigated the dependences of their energy and polarization on the ring-beam electron density and magnetic field. In general, electrostatic waves dominate the energetics of waves, and nonlinear waves are ubiquitous. In weakly magnetized plasmas, where the electron cyclotron frequency ω ce is lower than the electron plasma frequency ω pe, it is difficult to produce escaping electromagnetic waves with frequency ω > ω pe and small refractive index (k and c are the wavenumber and the light speed, respectively). Highly polarized and anisotropic escaping electromagnetic waves can, however, be effectively excited in strongly magnetized plasmas with ω ce/ω pe ≥ 1. The anisotropies of the energy, circular polarization degree (CPD), and spectrogram of these escaping electromagnetic waves strongly depend on the number density ratio of the ring-beam electrons to the background electrons. In particular, their CPDs can vary from left-handed to right-handed with the decrease of the ring-beam density, which may explain some observed properties of solar radio bursts (e.g., radio spikes) from the solar corona.