On the influence of CMEs on the global 3-D coronal electron density

Abstract. In order to analize the influence of a Coronal Mass Ejection (CME) on the coronal streamer belt, we made 3-D reconstructions of the electron density in the corona at heliospheric distances from 1.5 to 4 R_⊙ for periods before and after a CME occured. The reconstructions were performed using a tomography technique. We studied two CME cases: (i) a slow CME on 1 June 2008; (ii) two fast CMEs on 31 December 2007 and 2 January 2008. For the first case of slow CME, it was found: (i) the potential magnetic field configuration in the CME initiation region before the CME does not agree with the coronal density structure while after the CME the agreement between the field and density is much better. This could be manifistation of that that the field was non-potential before the CME and after the CME the field relaxes towards a more potential state. (ii) It was shown that the dimming caused by the slow CME is not due to rotation of the corona and a line-of-sight (LOS) effect but a streamer blow out effect took place.