MAGNETIC PROPERTIES OF SOLAR ACTIVE REGIONS THAT GOVERN LARGE SOLAR FLARES AND ERUPTIONS

ABSTRACT Solar flares and coronal mass ejections (CMEs), especially the larger ones, emanate from active regions (ARs). With the aim of understanding the magnetic properties that govern such flares and eruptions, we systematically survey all flare events with Geostationary Orbiting Environmental Satellite levels of ≥M5.0 within 45° from disk center between 2010 May and 2016 April. These criteria lead to a total of 51 flares from 29 ARs, for which we analyze the observational data obtained by the Solar Dynamics Observatory. More than 80% of the 29 ARs are found to exhibit δ-sunspots, and at least three ARs violate Hale's polarity rule. The flare durations are approximately proportional to the distance between the two flare ribbons, to the total magnetic flux inside the ribbons, and to the ribbon area. From our study, one of the parameters that clearly determine whether a given flare event is CME-eruptive or not is the ribbon area normalized by the sunspot area, which may indicate that the structural relationship between the flaring region and the entire AR controls CME productivity. AR characterization shows that even X-class events do not require δ-sunspots or strong-field, high-gradient polarity inversion lines. An investigation of historical observational data suggests the possibility that the largest solar ARs, with magnetic flux of 2 × 1023 Mx, might be able to produce "superflares" with energies of the order of 1034 erg. The proportionality between the flare durations and magnetic energies is consistent with stellar flare observations, suggesting a common physical background for solar and stellar flares.