| Abstract: | Spectrographic and partly imaging observations of three Type II solar radio bursts displaying three drifting bands with frequencies related as 1¬2¬3 are discussed. The radio data of two of these events were simultaneousely recorded by the digital radiospectrograph of the Observatory of Solar Radioastronomy in Potsdam-Tremsdorf and the radioheliograph of the Paris-Meudon Observatory in Nançay. The data allow the brightness temperatures of radio emission in the three frequency bands to be determined. The second harmonic is traditionally explained as a result of coalescence of two plasma waves into an electromagnetic wave at twice the plasma frequency. Two nonlinear merging processes—the coalescence of three plasma waves, and of a plasma wave and an electromagnetic wave at twice the plasma frequency—are considered to explain the occurrence of the third harmonic on Type II dynamic spectra. The analysis shows that both processes can fit the observed brightness temperatures of the second and third harmonic. The first process acts preferably at low phase velocities of plasma waves and sharp electron density gradients in the source, and the second process dominates in the case of high plasma wave phase velocities. It is shown that the occurrence of the third harmonic in type II bursts due to nonlinear processes in the coronal plasma indicates not only a powerful event but also some specific conditions in the shock or foreshock region. Finally, we propose a method to distinguish between the two invoked nonlinear processes by a statistical investigation of Type II burst data. |
