PIC Simulation of Double Plasma Resonance and Zebra Pattern of Solar Radio Bursts

The latest study has reported that plasma emission can be generated by energetic electrons of Dory–Guest–Harris distribution via the electron cyclotron maser instability (ECMI) in plasmas characterized by a large ratio of plasma oscillation frequency to electron gyro-frequency (ω _pe/Ω_ce). In our study, on the basis of the ECMI-plasma emission mechanism, we examine the double plasma resonance (DPR) effect and the corresponding plasma emission at both harmonic (H) and fundamental (F) bands using particle-in-cell simulations with various ω _pe/Ω_ce. This allows us to directly simulate the feature of the zebra pattern (ZP) observed in solar radio bursts for the first time. We find that (1) the simulations reproduce the DPR effect nicely for the upper hybrid and Z modes, as seen from their variation of intensity and linear growth rate with ω _pe/Ω_ce, (2) the intensity of the H emission is stronger than that of the F emission by ∼2 orders of magnitude and varies periodically with increasing ω _pe/Ω_ce, while the F emission is too weak to be significant (therefore, we suggest that it is the H emission accounting for solar ZPs), (3) the peak-valley contrast of the total intensity of H is ∼4, and the peak lies around integer values of ω _pe/Ω_ce (=10 and 11) for the present parameter setup. We also evaluate the effect of energy of energetic electrons on the characteristics of ECMI-excited waves and plasma radiation. The study provides novel insight on the physical origin of ZPs of solar radio bursts.