What is the relationship between photospheric flow fields and solar flares?

TL;DR

This study investigates the relationship between photospheric flow fields and solar flares by analyzing magnetogram data and magnetic/flow properties, finding certain magnetic flux measures and flow proxies are strongly associated with flare activity.

Contribution

It introduces a comprehensive analysis of extensive and intensive magnetic and flow properties from magnetograms and identifies key predictors of solar flares.

Findings

R and total |u| B^2 are strongly associated with flares

Intensive flow properties are not strongly linked to flares

Flow and magnetic flux measures can predict flare likelihood

Abstract

We estimated photospheric velocities by separately applying the Fourier Local Correlation Tracking (FLCT) and Differential Affine Velocity Estimator (DAVE) methods to 2708 co-registered pairs of SOHO/MDI magnetograms, with nominal 96-minute cadence and ~2" pixels, from 46 active regions (ARs) from 1996-1998 over the time interval t45 when each AR was within 45^o of disk center. For each magnetogram pair, we computed the average estimated radial magnetic field, B; and each tracking method produced an independently estimated flow field, u. We then quantitatively characterized these magnetic and flow fields by computing several extensive and intensive properties of each; extensive properties scale with AR size, while intensive properties do not depend directly on AR size. Intensive flow properties included moments of speeds, horizontal divergences, and radial curls; extensive flow properties included sums of these properties over each AR, and a crude proxy for the ideal Poynting flux, the total |u| B^2. Several magnetic quantities were also computed, including: total unsigned flux; a measure of the amount of unsigned flux near strong-field polarity inversion lines, R; and the total B^2. Next, using correlation and discriminant analysis, we investigated the associations between these properties and flares from the GOES flare catalog, when averaged over both t45 and shorter time windows, of 6 and 24 hours. We found R and total |u| B^2 to be most strongly associated with flares; no intensive flow properties were strongly associated with flares.