When: Friday, February 25, 2022, 2:30 PM - 3:30 PMWhere: Room 610, G.O. Jones building.
Speaker: Hamish Reid (UCL, MSSL)
Accelerated Electrons in the Solar Corona/Wind and their Type III Radio Burst Counterparts
The Sun frequently accelerates near-relativistic electron beams that travel out through the solar corona and interplanetary space. Interacting with their plasma environment, these beams produce type III radio bursts, and our close proximity to the Sun makes them the brightest astrophysical radio sources detected by humans. With the launch of Solar Orbiter and Parker Solar Probe we now have the chance to measure these electron beams close to the Sun and compare their properties to estimations made from numerical simulations of electron transport, and from analysing type III radio bursts. I will discuss some of the work that my collaborators and I have done that predicts electron beam properties in the solar corona and solar wind with future measurements from Solar Orbiter and Parker Solar Probe in mind. I will also present a recent study that shows how fine frequency structures in type III bursts observed by LOFAR can be used to remotely analyse the intensity and spectrum of compressive density fluctuations, and can infer ambient temperatures in astrophysical plasma.