RELEVANCE OF CME TO THE STRUCTURE OF LARGE-SCALE SOLAR MAGNETIC FIELDS

Abstract

The relevance of the occurrence rate and location of CME events to two main systems (giant and supergiant) of the large-scale solar magnetic field structure has been investigated. The clustering of CME events and solar flares toward the neutral line of the global field system (neutral line of the source surface field) corroborates the finding by Hundhausen that CME locations track the heliomagnetic equator. A good correlation has been revealed between the CME occurrence rate and variations of the index of the effective solar multipole, that characterizes the typical scale of the global solar magnetic field. The CME rate exhibits sharp jumps/decreases when the index of the effective solar multipole passes through n=4. The observations of X-ray 'blow-out' effects have been analyzed as probable manifestations of CMEs on the disk and have been compared with the large-scale magnetic field structure. As shown by the analysis, the X-ray arcades straddle the neutral line and occur, or at least tend to occur, where the neutral line exhibits a sharp bend. A conclusion is made that CME events are caused by interaction of two large-scale field systems, one of them (the global field system) determining the location of CMEs and another (the system of closed magnetic fields) their occurrence rate.