2013/11/21 by Baolin Tan, Chengming Tan, Yin Zhang +4 · 2 citations
Earth and Planetary Sciences · Physics and Astronomy · #Ionosphere and magnetosphere dynamics #Ocean Waves and Remote Sensing #Solar and Space Plasma Dynamics #astro-ph.SR
paper · pdf · doi:10.1088/0004-637x/780/2/129
13 pages,3 figures, 2 tables, accepted by ApJ, 2013
arxiv created 2013/11/21 · openalex publication_date 2013/12/17 · arxiv updated 2015/06/18 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
The microwave zebra pattern (ZP) is the most interesting, intriguing, and complex spectral structure frequently observed in solar flares. A comprehensive statistical study will certainly help us to understand the formation mechanism, which is not exactly clear now. This work presents a comprehensive statistical analysis of a big sample with 202 ZP events collected from observations at the Chinese Solar Broadband Radio Spectrometer at Huairou and the Ondŕejov Radiospectrograph in the Czech Republic at frequencies of 1.00–7.60 GHz from 2000 to 2013. After investigating the parameter properties of ZPs, such as the occurrence in flare phase, frequency range, polarization degree, duration, etc., we find that the variation of zebra stripe frequency separation with respect to frequency is the best indicator for a physical classification of ZPs. Microwave ZPs can be classified into three types: equidistant ZPs, variable-distant ZPs, and growing-distant ZPs, possibly corresponding to mechanisms of the Bernstein wave model, whistler wave model, and double plasma resonance model, respectively. This statistical classification may help us to clarify the controversies between the existing various theoretical models and understand the physical processes in the source regions.