Evolution of electron beam pulses of short duration in the solar corona

Abstract Narrowband radio bursts with durations of the order of milliseconds, called spikes, are known to be associated with solar flares. In order to understand the particle beams responsible for the radio spike phenomena, evolution of electron beam pulses injected from a solar flare region into the corona is studied. Numerical integration of the Fokker–Planck (FP) equation is used to follow the evolution of the electron beam pulse. The simulations show that the short duration pulses lose most of their energy within a second of propagation into the corona. Electron beam with a small low energy cut off is thermalized faster than that with a high low energy cut off.