130,578 research outputs found
Solar Flares and Coronal Mass Ejections: A Statistically Determined Flare Flux-CME Mass Correlation
In an effort to examine the relationship between flare flux and corresponding
CME mass, we temporally and spatially correlate all X-ray flares and CMEs in
the LASCO and GOES archives from 1996 to 2006. We cross-reference 6,733 CMEs
having well-measured masses against 12,050 X-ray flares having position
information as determined from their optical counterparts. For a given flare,
we search in time for CMEs which occur 10-80 minutes afterward, and we further
require the flare and CME to occur within +/-45 degrees in position angle on
the solar disk. There are 826 CME/flare pairs which fit these criteria.
Comparing the flare fluxes with CME masses of these paired events, we find CME
mass increases with flare flux, following an approximately log-linear, broken
relationship: in the limit of lower flare fluxes, log(CME mass)~0.68*log(flare
flux), and in the limit of higher flare fluxes, log(CME mass)~0.33*log(flare
flux). We show that this broken power-law, and in particular the flatter slope
at higher flare fluxes, may be due to an observational bias against CMEs
associated with the most energetic flares: halo CMEs. Correcting for this bias
yields a single power-law relationship of the form log(CME mass)~0.70*log(flare
flux). This function describes the relationship between CME mass and flare flux
over at least 3 dex in flare flux, from ~10^-7 to 10^-4 W m^-2.Comment: 28 pages, 16 figures, accepted to Solar Physic
Statistical study of magnetic non-potential measures in confined and eruptive flares
Using the HMI/SDO vector magnetic field observations, we studied the relation
of degree of magnetic non-potentiality with the observed flare/CME in active
regions. From a sample of 77 flare/CME cases, we found a general relation that
degree of non-potentiality is positively correlated with the flare strength and
the associated CME speeds. Since the magnetic flux in the flare-ribbon area is
more related to the reconnection, we trace the strong gradient polarity
inversion line (SGPIL), Schrijver's R value manually along the flare-ribbon
extent. Manually detected SGPIL length and R values show higher correlation
with the flare strength and CME speed than the automatically traced values
without flare-ribbon information. It highlights the difficulty of predicting
the flare strength and CME speed a priori from the pre-flare magnetograms used
in flare prediction models. Although the total, potential magnetic energy
proxies show weak positive correlation, the decrease in free energy exhibits
higher correlation (0.56) with the flare strength and CME speed. Moreover, the
eruptive flares have threshold of SGPIL length (31Mm), R value
(Mx), free-energy decrease (erg) compared to
confined ones. In 90\% eruptive flares, the decay-index curve is steeper
reaching within 42Mm, whereas it is beyond 42Mm in %
confined flares. While indicating the improved statistics in the predictive
capability of the AR eruptive behavior with the flare-ribbon information, our
study provides threshold magnetic properties for a flare to be eruptive.Comment: 12 pages, 9 figures, accepted in Ap
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