Statistical study of magnetic non-potential measures in confined and eruptive flares

Abstract

Using the HMI/SDO vector magnetic field observations, we studied the relation of degree of magnetic non-potentiality with the observed flare/CME in active regions. From a sample of 77 flare/CME cases, we found a general relation that degree of non-potentiality is positively correlated with the flare strength and the associated CME speeds. Since the magnetic flux in the flare-ribbon area is more related to the reconnection, we trace the strong gradient polarity inversion line (SGPIL), Schrijver's R value manually along the flare-ribbon extent. Manually detected SGPIL length and R values show higher correlation with the flare strength and CME speed than the automatically traced values without flare-ribbon information. It highlights the difficulty of predicting the flare strength and CME speed a priori from the pre-flare magnetograms used in flare prediction models. Although the total, potential magnetic energy proxies show weak positive correlation, the decrease in free energy exhibits higher correlation (0.56) with the flare strength and CME speed. Moreover, the eruptive flares have threshold of SGPIL length (31Mm), R value ($1.6\times 10^{19}$Mx), free-energy decrease ($2\times 10^{31}$erg) compared to confined ones. In 90\% eruptive flares, the decay-index curve is steeper reaching $n_{crit}=1.5$ within 42Mm, whereas it is beyond 42Mm in $>70$% confined flares. While indicating the improved statistics in the predictive capability of the AR eruptive behavior with the flare-ribbon information, our study provides threshold magnetic properties for a flare to be eruptive.

arXiv comment12 pages, 9 figures, accepted in ApJ

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