Confined and Ejective Eruptions of Kink-unstable Flux Ropes

By Tibor Török, B. Kliem. 2005

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The ideal helical kink instability of a force-free coronal magnetic flux rope, anchored in the photosphere, is studied as a model for solar eruptions. Using the flux rope model of Titov and Démoulin as the initial condition in MHD simulations, both the development of helical shape and the rise profile of a confined (or failed) filament eruption (on 2002 May 27) are reproduced in very good agreement with the observations. By modifying the model such that the magnetic field decreases more rapidly with height above the flux rope, a full (or ejective) eruption of the rope is obtained in very good agreement with the developing helical shape and the exponential-to-linear rise profile of a fast coronal mass ejection (CME) on 2001 May 15. This confirms that the helical kink instability of a twisted magnetic flux rope can be the mechanism of the initiation and the initial driver of solar eruptions. The agreement of the simulations with properties that are characteristic of many eruptions suggests that they are often triggered by the kink instability. The decrease of the overlying field with height is a main factor in deciding whether the instability leads to a confined event or to a CME.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/aff808e5b5c3ab3f7b6665642d4b54a1425a9e73

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Citations in the corpus

OBSERVING FLUX ROPE FORMATION DURING THE IMPULSIVE PHASE OF A SOLAR ERUPTION (2011, background): “Török & Kliem (2003, 2005) and Kliem & Török (2006) studied the instability of the flux rope and proposed that the kink and/or torus instability can trigger the CME.”
Numerical simulations of fast and slow coronal mass ejections (2007, methodology): “The line-tied flux rope corresponds to a current ring partly submerged in the dense subphotospheric plasma. c© 2007 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim www.an-journal.org The setup and initial conditions of the simulations are similar to those described in Török & Kliem (2005).”
The Helioseismic and Magnetic Imager (HMI) Vector Magnetic Field Pipeline: SHARPs – Space-Weather HMI Active Region Patches (2014, background): “Many studies have found a relationship between solar-flare productivity and various indices: magnetic helicity (e.g. Tian et al., 2005; Török and Kliem, 2005; LaBonte, Georgoulis, and Rust, 2007), free-energy proxies (e.”
COEXISTING FLUX ROPE AND DIPPED ARCADE SECTIONS ALONG ONE SOLAR FILAMENT (2010, background): “Several theoretical CME models require the presence of a flux rope prior to, or at the onset of, an eruption (e.g., Forbes & Isenberg 1991; Török & Kliem 2005; Fan & Gibson 2007), whereas others assume that the preeruptive configuration is that of an arcade, and that a flux rope is formed later…”
Coronal prominence structure and dynamics: A magnetic flux rope interpretation (2006, background): “Loss of equilibrium and eruptive behavior of both 2-D and 3-D twisted flux rope configurations have also been shown in numerical simulations [Linker et al., 2001; Amari et al., 2000, 2003a, 2004a, 2004b; Toeroek and Kliem, 2003; Kusano et al., 2004; Roussev et al., 2004; Kusano, 2005; Fan, 2005; To”
Eruption of magnetic flux ropes during flux emergence (2008, neutral): “As a result, the magnetic tension of the overlying field stops the rise of the rope (see also Török & Kliem 2005).”
Solar Force-free Magnetic Fields (2012, background): “Török and Kliem (2005) investigated the stability of the nonlinear force-free Titov– Démoulin equilibrium numerically with the help of a time-dependent MHD code.”
Photospheric flux cancellation and associated flux rope formation and eruption (2010, background): “A related result isthat, generally, a coronal flux rope is unstable if the overlying field falls off sufficiently rapidly with height (van Tend & Kuperus 1978; Török & Kliem 2005; Kliem & Török 2006).”
Onset of Coronal Mass Ejections Due to Loss of Confinement of Coronal Flux Ropes (2007, background): “Although significant writhingmotions are sometimes observed in conjunctionwith a CMEor a confined eruption (Rust &Labonte 2005; Török & Kliem 2005), many erupting prominences do not show such indications of the development of the kink instability.”
A Comparative Study between Eruptive X-Class Flares Associated with Coronal Mass Ejections and Confined X-Class Flares (2007, background): “Torok and Kliem (2005) and Kliem and Torok (2006) recently pointed out that the decrease of the overlying field with height is a main factor in deciding whether the kink-instability (in their twist flux rope model) leads to a confined event or a CME.”