First experimental studies of a perturbed zone preceding the front of a coronal mass ejection

The first experimental evidence for a perturbed zone that is likely filled with fast magnetoacoustic oscillations and precedes a coronal mass ejection is presented. When the speed of the coronal mass ejection exceeds the Alfven speed, an outward-moving discontinuity of the plasma density is observed in front of the perturbed zone, on scales comparable to the mean-free path for proton-proton collisions. This suggests that this discontinuity should be interpreted as a collisional shock at distances of R < 30 R-circle dot (where R-circle dot is the solar radius).