Letter to the Editor

Imprints of coronal temperature disturbances on type III bursts

School of Physics, University of Sydney, New South Wales 2006, Australia e-mail: boli@physics.usyd.edu.au

Received: 17 December 2009
Accepted: 29 January 2010

Abstract

The electron temperature and ion temperature  in the corona vary with time and location, due to transient and persistent activity on the Sun. The effects of spatially localized disturbances in and on coronal type III radio bursts are simulated. The disturbances are superimposed on monotonically varying temperature backgrounds and arise from spatially confined solar activity, Qualitatively and quantitatively different imprints are found on the curve of the maximum flux versus frequency of type III bursts, because of the disturbances in and . The results indicate that nonthermal coronal type III bursts offer a new tool to probe and distinguish between spatially localized structures of and along the paths of type III beams. Furthermore, localized temperature disturbances may be responsible for some fine structures in type III bursts, e.g., striae in type IIIb bursts in the presence of multiple, localized temperature disturbances.