Radio Spectral Imaging and Magnetohydrodynamic Modeling of a Coronal Mass Ejection–driven Shock: Connecting Solar Type II Radio Bursts with Shock-surface Magnetic Geometry
Abstract Solar type II radio bursts are widely regarded as signatures of shock waves propagating in the solar corona and are of particular importance for understanding shock-driven particle acceleration processes. Type II radio bursts often exhibit complex multilane and split-band features. The detailed spectral, temporal, and spatial structures carry key information about the shock properties and evolution. However, the physical origin of the multilane and split-band features remains unclear, largely due to a lack of spatially resolved data and understanding of the concurrent shock morphology and its magnetic-field context. In this work, we combine radio imaging spectroscopy of a multilane, split-band type II burst event with a three-dimensional global magnetohydrodynamic simulation of the associated coronal mass ejection–driven shock using the Alfvén Wave Solar atmosphere Model-Realtime. In this event, the burst intensity evolves from fundamental-emission dominated to harmonic-emission dominated. Meanwhile, the preferential emission source region moves from the Earth-facing side to the limb or farside, coinciding with quasi-perpendicular shock regions with enhanced Mach numbers. The observed spatial offset between the fundamental and harmonic sources is generally aligned with the projected shock-surface magnetic field from the simulation, consistent with anisotropic scattering in a magnetized turbulent plasma. These results establish a physical connection between type II radio sources and coronal shock magnetic geometry, providing new insight into the origin of the multilane features and their diagnostics of coronal shocks.
Authors
- W. B. Manchester (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0472-9408)
- Nikita Kosogorov (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1226-118X)
- Surajit Mondal (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2325-5298)
- Gregg Hallinan (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7083-4049)
- P Zhang (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2632-9915)
- Sijie Yu (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2872-2614)
- Casey J. Law (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4119-9963)
- Weihao Liu
- Bin Chen
Institutions
- New Jersey Institute of Technology (US)
- Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (IN)
- California Institute of Technology (US)
- University of Michigan (US)
Publication Details
- Journal
- The Astrophysical Journal
- Published
- 2026-11-11
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-4357/aea3f9
- Citations
- 1
- Primary Topic
- Solar and Space Plasma Dynamics
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 0.75
Funders
- National Science Foundation
- National Aeronautics and Space Administration
- Nanjing Institute of Technology
- Ames Research Center