A Statistical Study of Solar Filament Eruptions that Form High-speed Coronal Mass Ejections

Abstract

Abstract Coronal mass ejections (CMEs) play a decisive role in driving space weather, especially the fast ones (e.g., with speeds above 800 km s−1). Understanding the trigger mechanisms of fast CMEs can help us gain important information in forecasting them. The filament eruptions accompanied with CMEs provide a good tracer in studying the early evolution of CMEs. Here we surveyed 66 filament-accompanied fast CMEs to analyze the correlation between the trigger mechanisms, namely either magnetic reconnection or ideal MHD process, associated flares, and CME speeds. Based on the data gathered from SDO, GONG, and STEREO, we find that (1) active region (AR) filament and intermediate filament (IF) eruptions show a higher probability for producing fast CMEs than quiet Sun (QS) filaments, while the probability of polar crown (PC) filament eruptions is zero in our statistic; (2) AR filament eruptions that produce fast CMEs are more likely to be triggered by magnetic reconnection, while QS filaments and IFs are more likely to be triggered by an ideal MHD process; (3) for AR filaments and IFs, it seems that the specific trigger mechanism does not have a significant influence on the resulting CME speeds, while for the QS filaments, the ideal MHD mechanism can more likely generate a faster CME; (4) comparing with previous statistical studies, the onset heights of filament eruptions and the decay indexes of the overlying field show some differences: for AR filaments and IFs, the decay indexes are larger and much closer to the theoretical threshold, while for QS filaments, the onset heights are higher than those obtained in previous results.