Insights into Coronal Mass Ejection Shocks with the Irish Low Frequency Array (I-LOFAR)

The Sun can produce large-scale energetic events such as solar flares and coronal mass ejections (CMEs) which can excite shock waves that propagate through the corona. To date, the shock kinematics responsible for particle acceleration and emission at radio wavelengths are not well understood. Here, we investigate these phenomena using radio observations of the 2017 September 2, C7.7 solar flare at 10-240 MHz from Irish Low Frequency Array (I-LOFAR). We investigate the relationship between the features in I-LOFAR’s dynamics spectra and the shock kinematics as derived from imaging observations using the AIA, SUVI and SOHO/LASCO. In future work we will calculate shock Mach number from both shock geometry in SUVI and modelling of coronal Alfvén speed. The relationship between shock characteristics from SUVI and data driven modelling will be compared to shock characteristics from radio in order to determine the plausibility of shock accelerated electron release into the solar corona.