Solar active region magnetic parameters and their relationship with the properties of halo coronal mass ejections

Abstract

The coronal mass ejections (CMEs) from the sun consist of the plasma and strong magnetic fields (~4–5 G at 1.3 R⊙) and generally, the fast CMEs are often associated with energetic particles of energy few hundreds of MeV. When the fast CMEs are ejected towards the Earth, they can disrupt the flow of solar wind in the heliosphere and impact the Earth’s magnetosphere causing known space weather phenomena such as, geomagnetic storms, auroras, communication blackouts, satellite drag and failures. In this work, we have investigated a set of 60 halo coronal mass ejections (CMEs) associated with X-ray flares (≥C1.0) observed in 49 active regions during the period 2010–2016 in solar cycle 24. The X-ray flares and white light CMEs were observed by Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES) and the Large Angle Spectrometric Coronagraph (LASCO) coronagraph on the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) satellite, respectively. The active region magnetic properties are obtained from Space - weather HMI Active Region Patch (SHARP) parameters for this set of events. For each active region (AR), the mean value is calculated from a 1-day time series for each of the 16 photospheric magnetic parameters extracted from the vector magnetogram products at a 12-min cadence. The dependency of flare flux and CME kinematics properties on the active region magnetic properties is further confirmed through correlation studies. As a result, we found a moderate to strong correlation value for flare flux and halo CME kinematic properties (like linear speed, space speed and kinetic energy) among the seven (USFLUX, TOTUSJZ, TOTUSJH, ABSNJZH, SAVNCPP, TOTPOT and MEANJZH) SHARP parameters. Most of the events (≥73%) were produced by βγδ, βγ and βδ Hale - type sunspot groups and Ekc/Dkc/Fkc McIntosh sunspot classes. It reveals that the most complex active regions are feasible sources of strong flare-associated halo CME productivity. The front side halo CME kinematic properties depend more on the vertical current helicity and polarity magnetic parameters than the other magnetic parameters. In addition, the flare intensity and speed of CME, calculated using an empirical model with the active region magnetic parameters, are found nearly equal to the observed values. This result will be useful to identify the important magnetic parameters for modelling the occurrence of flare- associated halo CMEs and to understand the physical relationship between them.