Space, time and velocity association of successive coronal mass ejections

Abstract

Our aim is to investigate the possible physical association between consecutive coronal mass ejections (CMEs). Through a statistical study of the main characteristics of 27761 CMEs observed by SOHO/LASCO during the past 20 years. We found the waiting time (WT) or time elapsed between two consecutive CMEs is $<5$ hrs for 59\% and $<25$ hrs for 97\% of the events, and the CME WTs follow a Pareto Type IV statistical distribution. The difference of the position-angle of a considerable population of consecutive CME pairs is less than $30^{\circ }$, indicating the possibility that their source locations are in the same region. The difference between the speed of trailing and leading consecutive CMEs follows a generalized Student t-distribution. The fact that the WT and the speed difference have heavy-tailed distributions along with a detrended fluctuation analysis shows that the CME process has a long-range dependence. As a consequence of the long-range dependence, we found a small but significative difference between the speed of consecutive CMEs, with the speed of the trailing CME being higher than the speed of the leading CME. The difference is largest for WTs < 2 hrs and tends to be zero for WTs > 10 hrs, and it is more evident during the ascending and descending phases of the solar cycle. We suggest that this difference may be caused by a drag force acting over CMEs closely related in space and time.

References in corpus (15)

• The origin of bursts and heavy tails in human dynamics
• Detecting Long-range Correlations with Detrended Fluctuation Analysis
• Global Energetics of Thirty-Eight Large Solar Eruptive Events
• The Interaction of Successive Coronal Mass Ejections: A Review
• History and Development of Coronal Mass Ejections as a Key Player in Solar Terrestrial Relationship
• Global Energetics of Solar Flares: V. Energy Closure in Flares and Coronal Mass Ejections
• CME dynamics using STEREO & LASCO observations: the relative importance of Lorentz forces and solar wind drag
• Testing the Empirical Shock Arrival Model using Quadrature Observations
• Scaling Relations in Coronal Mass Ejections and Energetic Proton Events associated with Solar Superflares
• The coronal mass ejection waiting-time distribution
• Connecting Coronal Mass Ejections to their Solar Active Region Sources: Combining Results from the HELCATS and FLARECAST Projects
• On the enhanced coronal mass ejection detection rate since the solar cycle 23 polar field reversal
• Statistical study of solar dimmings using CoDiT
• Active Longitude and Coronal Mass Ejection Occurrences
• Mass Loss Evolution in the EUV Low Corona from SDO/AIA Data