Solar Flares and Coronal Mass Ejections: A Statistically Determined Flare Flux - CME Mass Correlation
Abstract
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 6733 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° 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 - 10−4 W m−2.
- Publication:
-
Solar Physics
- Pub Date:
- January 2011
- DOI:
- 10.1007/s11207-010-9672-7
- arXiv:
- arXiv:1011.0424
- Bibcode:
- 2011SoPh..268..195A
- Keywords:
-
- Coronal mass ejections;
- Flares;
- Astrophysics - Solar and Stellar Astrophysics
- E-Print:
- 28 pages, 16 figures, accepted to Solar Physics