Flare - Flux Rope Relationship using Post-eruption Arcades
Abstract
A close connection between the coronal mass ejections (CME) and flare in a given solar eruption has been confirmed from various aspects of the two phenomena. The relation between the reconnection flux and the poloidal flux of the associated 1-AU flux ropes is of particular importance because it can be used for space weather predictions. It is customary to compute the flare reconnection flux from the flare-ribbon area and photospheric/chromospheric magnetic field strength. Here we report on a new method to compute the reconnection flux from post-eruption arcades (PEAs). Instead of counting the ribbon pixels in a series of images, we simply measure the area under PEAs after the flare maximum and the underlying photospheric magnetic field. The reconnection flux is then half of the product of these two quantities. We illustrate this method using specific examples and show that the ribbon and arcade methods yield results, which are in good agreement. Finally, we show that this provides a simple means of predicting the 1-AU flux rope magnetic field from measurements made near the Sun.
- Publication:
-
40th COSPAR Scientific Assembly
- Pub Date:
- 2014
- Bibcode:
- 2014cosp...40E1047G