GLOBAL ENERGETICS OF SOLAR FLARES. IV. CORONAL MASS EJECTION ENERGETICS

Journal Article · Tue Nov 01 04:00:00 EDT 2016 · Astrophysical Journal

DOI:https://doi.org/10.3847/0004-637X/831/1/105· OSTI ID:22667246

This study entails the fourth part of a global flare energetics project, in which the mass m {sub cme}, kinetic energy E {sub kin}, and the gravitational potential energy E {sub grav} of coronal mass ejections (CMEs) is measured in 399 M and X-class flare events observed during the first 3.5 years of the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) mission, using a new method based on the EUV dimming effect. EUV dimming is modeled in terms of a radial adiabatic expansion process, which is fitted to the observed evolution of the total emission measure of the CME source region. The model derives the evolution of the mean electron density, the emission measure, the bulk plasma expansion velocity, the mass, and the energy in the CME source region. The EUV dimming method is truly complementary to the Thomson scattering method in white light, which probes the CME evolution in the heliosphere at r ≳ 2 R {sub ⊙}, while the EUV dimming method tracks the CME launch in the corona. We compare the CME parameters obtained in white light with the LASCO/C2 coronagraph with those obtained from EUV dimming with the Atmospheric Imaging Assembly onboard the SDO for all identical events in both data sets. We investigate correlations between CME parameters, the relative timing with flare parameters, frequency occurrence distributions, and the energy partition between magnetic, thermal, nonthermal, and CME energies. CME energies are found to be systematically lower than the dissipated magnetic energies, which is consistent with a magnetic origin of CMEs.

• OSTI ID: 22667246
• Journal Information: Astrophysical Journal, Journal Name: Astrophysical Journal Journal Issue: 1 Vol. 831; ISSN ASJOAB; ISSN 0004-637X
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS
COMPARATIVE EVALUATIONS
CORRELATIONS
DISTRIBUTION
ELECTRON DENSITY
ELECTRONS
EMISSION
EXTREME ULTRAVIOLET RADIATION
HELIOSPHERE
MASS
PLASMA
PLASMA EXPANSION
SOLAR FLARES
SUN
THOMSON SCATTERING
ULTRAVIOLET RADIATION
VELOCITY
VISIBLE RADIATION