  It is now generally accepted that the impulsive acceleration of a coronal
mass ejection (CME) in the inner corona is closely correlated in time with the
main energy release of the associated solar flare. In this paper, we examine in
detail the post-impulsive-phase acceleration of a CME in the outer corona,
which is the phase of evolution immediately following the main impulsive
acceleration of the CME; this phase is believed to correspond to the decay
phase of the associated flare. This observational study is based on a
statistical sample of 247 CMEs that are associated with M- and X-class GOES
soft X-ray flares from 1996 to 2006. We find that, from many examples of
events, the CMEs associated with flares with long-decay time (or so-called
long-duration flares) tend to have positive post-impulsive-phase acceleration,
even though some of them have already obtained a high speed at the end of the
impulsive acceleration but do not show a deceleration expected from the
aerodynamic dragging of the background solar wind. On the other hand, the CMEs
associated with flares of short-decay time tend to have significant
deceleration. In the scattering plot of all events, there is a weak correlation
between CME post-impulsive-phase acceleration and flare decay time. The CMEs
deviated from the general trend are mostly slow or weak ones associated with
flares of short-decay time; the deviation is caused by the relatively stronger
solar wind dragging force for these events. The implications of our results on
CME dynamics and CME-flare relations are discussed.
