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The Solar Connection of Enhanced Heavy Ion Charge States in the Interplanetary Medium: Implications for the Flux-Rope Structure of CMEs

  • Flux-Rope Structure of Coronal Mass Ejections
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Abstract

We investigated a set of 54 interplanetary coronal mass ejection (ICME) events whose solar sources are very close to the disk center (within ± 15∘ from the central meridian). The ICMEs consisted of 23 magnetic-cloud (MC) events and 31 non-MC events. Our analyses suggest that the MC and non-MC ICMEs have more or less the same eruption characteristics at the Sun in terms of soft X-ray flares and CMEs. Both types have significant enhancements in ion charge states, although the non-MC structures have slightly lower levels of enhancement. The overall duration of charge-state enhancement is also considerably smaller than that in MCs as derived from solar wind plasma and magnetic signatures. We find very good correlation between the Fe and O charge-state measurements and the flare properties such as soft X-ray flare intensity and flare temperature for both MCs and non-MCs. These observations suggest that both MC and non-MC ICMEs are likely to have a flux-rope structure and the unfavorable observational geometry may be responsible for the appearance of non-MC structures at 1 AU. We do not find any evidence for an active region expansion resulting in ICMEs lacking a flux-rope structure because the mechanism of producing high charge states and the flux-rope structure at the Sun is the same for MC and non-MC events.

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Acknowledgements

We thank the ACE, Wind, and SOHO teams for providing the data on line. SOHO is a project of international collaboration between ESA and NASA.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD, USA

    N. Gopalswamy

  2. The Catholic University of America, Washington, DC, USA

    P. Mäkelä, S. Akiyama, H. Xie & S. Yashiro

  3. NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center, Boulder, CO, USA

    A. A. Reinard

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  1. N. Gopalswamy
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  2. P. Mäkelä
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  3. S. Akiyama
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  4. H. Xie
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Correspondence to N. Gopalswamy.

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Flux-Rope Structure of Coronal Mass Ejections

Guest Editors: N. Gopalswamy, T. Nieves-Chinchilla, M. Hidalgo, J. Zhang, and P. Riley

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Gopalswamy, N., Mäkelä, P., Akiyama, S. et al. The Solar Connection of Enhanced Heavy Ion Charge States in the Interplanetary Medium: Implications for the Flux-Rope Structure of CMEs. Sol Phys 284, 17–46 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11207-012-0215-2

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