High resolution observations with Artemis–JLS

Abstract

Aims. We examined the characteristics of isolated intermediate drift bursts and their morphologies on dynamic spectra, in particular the positioning of emission and absorption ridges. Furthermore we studied the repetition rate of fiber groups. These were compared with a model in order to determine the conditions under which the intermediate drift bursts appear and exhibit the above characteristics. Methods. We analyzed sixteen metric type IV events with embedded intermediate drift bursts, observed with the Artemis–JLS radio spectrograph from July 1999 to July 2005 plus an event on 1st August 2010. The events were recorded with the SAO high resolution (10 ms cadence) receiver in the 270–450 MHz range with a frequency resolution of 1.4 MHz. We developed cross- and autocorrelation techniques to measure the duration, spectral width, and frequency drift of fiber bursts in 47 intermediate drift bursts (IMD) groups embedded within the continuum of the sixteen events mentioned above. We also developed a semi-automatic algorithm to track fibers on dynamic spectra. Results. The mean duration of individual fiber bursts at fixed frequency was δt ≈ 300 ms, while the instantaneous relative bandwidth was fw/f ≈ 0.90% and the total frequency extent was Δftot ≈ 35 MHz. The recorded intermediate drift bursts had frequency drift, positive or negative, with average values of df/fdt equal to −0.027 and 0.024 s−1 respectively. Quite often the fibers appeared in groups; the burst repetition rate within groups was, on average, ∼0.98 s. We distinguish six morphological groups of fibers, based on the relative position of the emission and absorption ridges. These included fibers with emission or absorption ridges only, fibers with the absorption ridge at lower or higher frequency than the emission, or with two absorption ridges above and below the emission. There were also some fibers for which two emission ridges were separated by an absorption ridge. Some additional complex groups within our data set were not easy to classify. A number of borderline cases of fibers with very high drift rate (∼0.30 s−1) or very narrow total bandwidth (∼8 MHz) were recorded; among them there was a group of rope-like fibers characterized by fast repetition rate and relatively narrow total frequency extent. We found that the whistler hypothesis leads to reasonable magnetic field values (∼4.6 G), while the Alfven-wave hypothesis requires much higher field. From the variation of the drift rate with time we estimated the ratio of the whistler to the cyclotron frequency, x, to be in the range of 0.3−0.6, varying by ∼0.05−0.1 in individual fibers; the same analysis gives an average value of the frequency scale along the loop of ∼220 Mm. Finally, we present empirical relations between fiber burst parameters and discuss their possible origin.