Relationship Between Early Bursts during flare precursors and Onsets of Solar Eruptions

We investigate the characteristics of early bursts during the precursor phase of flares, to understand what role magnetic reconnection plays in the initiation of solar eruptions. In this study, we focus on the initiation of 17 CME-flare events and analyze observations of flare reconnection and CME kinematics. Those selected events are a subset of the 60 events reported in Zhu et al. (2020), and are well covered by SDO and STEREO from different viewpoints with high-cadence observations. With the measurements of CME kinematics and magnetic reconnection rates, we determine the time and location of early signatures of magnetic reconnection with respect to the CME evolution. We classify these early reconnection signatures into three categories based on their relative locations to the major flare ribbon. We evaluate the related physical values (e.g., field connectivity, electric current) during these early bursts and discuss how the early reconnection signatures could be related to the initiation of the solar eruptions.