Different Power-Law Indices in the Frequency Distributions of Flares with and without Coronal Mass Ejections

By S. Yashiro, S. Akiyama, Nat Gopalswamy, R. Howard. 2006

204 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We investigated the frequency distributions of flares with and without coronal mass ejections (CMEs) as a function of flare parameters (peak flux, fluence, and duration of soft X-ray flares). We used CMEs observed by the Large Angle and Spectrometric Coronagraph (LASCO) on board the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) mission and soft X-ray flares (C3.2 and above) observed by the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES) during 1996-2005. We found that the distributions obey a power law of the form dN/dX ∝ X-α, where X is a flare parameter and dN is the number of events recorded within the interval [X, X + dX]. For the flares with (without) CMEs, we obtained the power-law index α = 1.98 ± 0.05 (α = 2.52 ± 0.03) for the peak flux, α = 1.79 ± 0.05 (α = 2.47 ± 0.11) for the fluence, and α = 2.49 ± 0.11 (α = 3.22 ± 0.15) for the duration. The power-law indices for flares without CMEs are steeper than those for flares with CMEs. The larger power-law index for flares without CMEs supports the possibility that nanoflares contribute to coronal heating.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/5d5a7d7e2dbbbf3f4016a1191602f20f47b013a6

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In Astronomy and Astrophysics

1. Nat Gopalswamy
2. S. Yashiro
3. R. Howard
4. M. Temmer
5. A. Vourlidas
6. H. Hudson
7. C. Schrijver
8. S. Couvidat

Citations in the corpus

• 25 Years of Self-Organized Criticality: Solar and Astrophysics (2014, background): “…with the OSO-3 spacecraft (Hudson et al. 1969), the Explorer (Drake 1971), Yohkoh/SXT (Shimizu 1995; Shimojo and Shibata 1999), the SMM/BCS (Lee et al. 1999), and the GOES spacecraft (Lee et al. 995; Feldman et al. 1997; Veronig et al. 2002a,b; Yashiro et al. 2006; Aschwanden and Freeland 2012).”
• WHY IS THE GREAT SOLAR ACTIVE REGION 12192 FLARE-RICH BUT CME-POOR? (2015, background): “A survey of 1996–2005 indicates that 75 of 90 X-class flares are associated with CMEs; for those above X3 the rate is 23 in 24 (Yashiro et al. 2006).”
• The SOHO/LASCO CME Catalog (2009, background): “This may indicate that flares without CMEs may contribute to coronal heating (Yashiro et al. 2006) while CMEs carry away the mass and magnetic field into the heliosphere.”
• Global Properties of Solar Flares (2011, methodology): “The LASCO data demonstrate this compellingly (Yashiro et al. 2006), re- vealing that essentially all major flares have CMEs (Figure 16).”
• Driving major solar flares and eruptions: A review (2008, background): “Flares with or without CMEs may be statistically different: Yashiro et al. (2006), for example, suggest that power-law distributions for peak fluxes, fluences, and duration are significantly steeper for flares without CMEs than for flares associated with CMEs.”