Very Large Array and SOHO Observations of Type I Noise Storms, Large-Scale Loops and Magnetic Restructuring in the Corona

Abstract

Very Large Array (VLA) observations at 91-cm wavelength are combined with data from the SOHO EIT, MDI and LASCO and used to study the evolving coronal magnetic environment in which Type I noise storms and large-scale coronal loops occur. On one day, we have shown the early evolution of a coronal mass ejection (CME) in projection in the disk by tracing its decimetric continuum emission. The passage of the CME and an associated EUV ejection event coincided with an increase in the 91-cm brightness temperature of an extended coronal loop located a significant distance away and with the displacement of the 91-cm source during the early stage of the CME. We suggest that the energy deposited into the corona by the CME may have caused a local increase in the thermal or nonthermal electron density or in the electron temperature in the middle corona resulting in a transient increase in the brightness of the 91-cm loop. On a second observing day, we have consolidated the known association between magnetic changes in the photosphere and low corona with noise storm enhancements in an overlying radio source well in advance of a flare event in the same region. We find anti-correlated changes in the brightness of a bipolar 91-cm Type I noise storm that appear to be associated with the cancellation and emergence of magnetic flux in the underlying photosphere. In this case, the evolving fields may have led to magnetic instabilities and reconnection in the corona and the acceleration of nonthermal particles that initiated and sustained the Type I noise storm.