Natural spectral bandwidth of electron cyclotron maser emission

We studied the spectral properties of the electron cyclotron maser emission generated by anisotropic distributions of fast electrons with power-law magnitude distributions in solar flares. The natural bandwidth of the generated spectral line depends significantly on the angle between the direction of the wave emission and the direction of the magnetic field in the source. In addition, the line bandwidth depends on the parameters of the momentum and pitch-angle distribution functions for fast electrons. The typical spectral bandwidths are shown to lie within the range 0.1–0.4%, in agreement with the minimum observable bandwidths of millisecond solar radio spikes.