Interplanetary Type IV Bursts

TL;DR

This study analyzes 48 interplanetary type IV radio bursts, exploring their characteristics, associations with solar flares and CMEs, and their duration, revealing insights into their origins and propagation in the solar system.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive analysis of interplanetary type IV bursts, including their duration, association with solar phenomena, and the dynamics of their propagation, which was not extensively characterized before.

Findings

Most events are compact with an average duration of 106 minutes.

Majority are associated with M- and X-class flares and fast CMEs.

Long-duration events can last from hours to days and may replenish their energetic electrons.

Abstract

We study the characteristics of moving type IV radio bursts which extend to the hectometric wavelengths (interplanetary type IV or type IV IP bursts) and their relationship with energetic phenomena on the Sun. Our dataset comprises 48 interplanetary type IV bursts observed with Wind/WAVES in the 13.825 MHz-20 kHz frequency range. The dynamic spectra of the RSTN, the Nancay Decametric Array (DAM), the ARTEMIS-IV, the Culgoora, Hiraiso and Izmiran Radio Spectrographs were used to track the evolution of the events in the low corona. These were supplemented with SXR flux data from the GOES and CME data from the SOHO/LASCO. Positional information of the coronal bursts was obtained by the NRH. We examined the relationship of the type IV events with coronal radio bursts, CMEs and SXR flares. The majority of the events (45) were characterized as compact; their duration was on average 106 minutes. This type of events was, mostly, associated with M-and X-class flares (40 out of 45) and fast CMEs; 32 of these events had CMEs faster than 1000 km/s. Furthermore, in 43 compact events the CME was, possibly, subjected to reduced aerodynamic drag as it was propagating in the wake of a previous CME. A minority (three) of long lived type IV IP bursts was detected, with duration from 960 minutes to 115 hours. These events are referred to as extended or long duration and appear to replenish their energetic electron content, possibly from electrons escaping from the corresponding coronal type IV bursts. The latter were found to persist on the disk, for tens of hours to days. Prominent among them was the unusual interplanetary type IV burst of 18--23 May 2002, which is the longest event in the Wind/WAVES catalog. The three extended events were, usually, accompanied by a number of flares, of GOES class C in their majority, and of CMEs, many of which were slow and narrow.