On the Fundamental and Harmonic Components of Low-Frequency Type III Solar Radio Bursts

Abstract

Ground-based observations of Type III bursts made with spectrographs and spectro-polarimeters, at frequencies above the ionospheric cut-off, reveal that most bursts (excluding storm Type IIIs) have fundamental (F) and harmonic (H) structure (Wild et al. 1959; Dulk and Suzuki 1980). An example of F-H bursts is given by Sheridan (1978). Such bursts are produced by streams of electrons travelling along open magnetic field lines and exciting plasma oscillations which are converted to electro-magnetic waves at both the F and H frequencies of the local plasma frequency in the corona.