Coronal current sheet signatures during the 17 May 2002 CME-flare

¹ Astrophysikalisches Institut Potsdam (AIP), 14482 Potsdam, Germany e-mail: haurass@aip.de
² University of Firenze, Astronomy and Space Science Deptm., 50125 Firenze, Italy
³ INAF – Osservatorio Astrofisico di Arcetri, 50125 Firenze, Italy

Received: 30 March 2009
Accepted: 17 August 2009

Abstract

Context. The relation between current sheets (CSs) associated with flares, revealed by characteristic radio signatures, and current sheets associated with coronal mass ejections (CMEs), detected in coronal ultraviolet (UV) and white light data, has not been analyzed, yet.

Aims. We aim at establishing the relationship between CSs associated with a limb flare and CSs associated with the CME that apparently develops after the flare. We use a unique data set, acquired on May 17, 2002, which includes radio and extreme ultraviolet (XUV) observations.

Methods. Spectral radio diagnostics, UV spectroscopic techniques, white light coronograph imaging, and (partly) radio imaging are used to illustrate the relation between the CSs and to infer the physical parameters of the radially aligned features that develop in the aftermath of the CME.

Results. During the flare, several phenomena are interpreted in accordance with earlier work and with reference to the common eruptive flare scenario as evidence of flare CSs in the low corona. These are drifting pulsating structures in dynamic radio spectra, an erupting filament, expanding coronal loops morphologically recalling the later white light CME, and associated with earlier reported hard X-ray source sites. In the aftermath of the CME, UV spectra allowed us to estimate the CS temperature and density, over the 1.5–2.1  interval of heliocentric altitudes. The UV detected CS, however, appears to be only one of many current sheets that exist underneath the erupting flux rope. A type II burst following the CME radio continuum in time at lower frequencies is considered as the radio signature of a coronal shock excited at the flank of the CME.

Conclusions. The results show that we can build an overall scenario where the CME is interpreted in terms of an erupting arcade crossing the limb of the Sun and connected to underlying structures via multiple CSs. Eventually, the observed limb flare seems to be a consequence of the ongoing CME.