Relationship between prominence eruptions and coronal mass ejections during solar cycle 24

Abstract

In this paper, we presented the relationship between prominence eruptions (PEs) and coronal mass ejections (CMEs) from May 2010 to December 2019 covering most of the solar cycle 24. We used data from the atmospheric imaging assembly (AIA) for PEs and the large angle and spectrometric coronagraph (LASCO) for CMEs. We identified 1225 PEs, with 67% being radial, 32% transverse and 1% failed PEs. The radial and transverse PEs, and the combined set have average speeds of \(\approx \)53, 9 and 38 \(\text {km s}^{-1}\), respectively. PE association with CMEs is examined by assigning a confidence level (CL) from 0 (no association) to 3 (clear association). Out of 1225 PEs, 662 (54%) are found to be associated with CMEs including CLs 1, 2 and 3. Our study reveals that the spatial and temporal relationships between PEs and CMEs vary over the solar cycle. During solar minima, CMEs tend to deflect towards the equator, possibly due to a stronger polar field. Temporal offsets are larger during solar maxima and smaller during the minima. This implies that the PEs appear earlier in LASCO C2 FOV during the minima than the maxima. Among the 662 CMEs associated with PEs, 78% show clear bright core structures. Investigation of morphological and temporal behaviour’s of these CMEs indicate that the prominences evolve into CME cores at higher altitudes suggesting that PEs and CME cores are the same structure. Average speeds of the PEs, CME core and CME leading edge are 62, 390 and 525 \(\text {km s}^{-1}\), respectively. The speed of CME cores is faster than the PEs because the former was observed at larger heights, where they have accelerated to higher speeds.