INITIATION AND DEVELOPMENT OF THE WHITE-LIGHT AND RADIO CORONAL MASS EJECTION ON 2001 APRIL 15

The 2001 April 15 event was one of the largest of the last solar cycle. A former study established that this event was associated with a coronal mass ejection (CME) observed both at white light and radio frequencies. This radio CME is illuminated by synchrotron emission from relativistic electrons. In this paper, we investigate the relation of the radio CME to its extreme-ultraviolet (EUV) and white-light counterpart and reach four main conclusions. (1) The radio CME corresponds to the white-light flux rope cavity. (2) The presence of a reconnecting current sheet behind the erupting flux rope is framed, both from below and above, by bursty radio sources. This reconnection is the source of relativistic radiating electrons which are injected down along the reconnected coronal arches and up along the flux rope border forming the radio CME. (3) Radio imaging reveals an important lateral overexpansion in the low corona; this overexpansion is at the origin of compression regions where type II and III bursts are imaged. (4) Already in the initiation phase, radio images reveal large-scale interactions of the source active region (AR) with its surroundings, including another AR and open magnetic fields. Thus, these complementary radio, EUV, and white-light data validate the flux rope eruption model of CMEs.