Magnetic Reconnection Flux and Coronal Mass Ejection Velocity

Abstract

We explore the relationship between the total reconnection flux ψ_rec estimated from flare observations and the velocity V_CME of coronal mass ejections (CMEs) observed with the Large Angle and Spectrometric Coronagraph (LASCO) Experiment. Our study includes 13 events with varying magnetic configurations in source regions. It is shown that V_CME is proportional to ψ_rec, with a linear cross-correlation of 89% and confidence level greater than 99.5%. This result confirms the importance of magnetic flux transferred by magnetic reconnection in the early stage of fast CMEs. On the other hand, the CME velocity and kinematic energy are probably independent of magnetic configurations of source regions.