OBSERVING FLUX ROPE FORMATION DURING THE IMPULSIVE PHASE OF A SOLAR ERUPTION

By Xin Cheng, J. Zhang, Yang Liu, M. Ding. 2011

171 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Magnetic flux ropes are believed to be an important structural component of coronal mass ejections (CMEs). While there exists much observational evidence of flux ropes after the eruption, e.g., as seen in remote-sensing coronagraph images or in situ solar wind data, the direct observation of flux ropes during CME impulsive phase has been rare. In this Letter, we present an unambiguous observation of a flux rope still in the formation phase in the low corona. The CME of interest occurred above the east limb on 2010 November 3 with footpoints partially blocked. The flux rope was seen as a bright blob of hot plasma in the Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (AIA) 131 Å passband (peak temperature ∼11 MK) rising from the core of the source active region, rapidly moving outward and stretching the surrounding background magnetic field upward. The stretched magnetic field seemed to curve-in behind the core, similar to the classical magnetic reconnection scenario in eruptive flares. On the other hand, the flux rope appeared as a dark cavity in the AIA 211 Å passband (2.0 MK) and 171 Å passband (0.6 MK); in these relatively cool temperature bands, a bright rim clearly enclosed the dark cavity. The bright rim likely represents the pileup of the surrounding coronal plasma compressed by the expanding flux rope. The composite structure seen in AIA multiple temperature bands is very similar to that in the corresponding coronagraph images, which consists of a bright leading edge and a dark cavity, commonly believed to be a flux rope.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/df13b7690021b22ba5b3cb98352c9c29aed5657c

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Astronomy and Astrophysics

1. G. Aulanier
2. Etienne Pariat
3. Brigitte Schmieder
4. P. Démoulin
5. M. Janvier
6. Xin Cheng
7. M. Ding
8. J. Zhang

Citations in the corpus

• ELECTRIC CURRENTS IN FLARE RIBBONS: OBSERVATIONS AND THREE-DIMENSIONAL STANDARD MODEL (2014, background): “Eruptive flares have several observational characteristics, including the flare loops (e.g., Schmieder et al. 1995) and twisted magnetic field lines, identified as the flux rope at the origin of CMEs (e.g., Cheng et al. 2011; Zhang et al. 2012; Patsourakos et al. 2013).”
• DIRECT EVIDENCE FOR A FAST CORONAL MASS EJECTION DRIVEN BY THE PRIOR FORMATION AND SUBSEQUENT DESTABILIZATION OF A MAGNETIC FLUX ROPE (2012, background): “Note that previous observations detected a hot flux rope forming only a few minutes before the onset of the associated eruption (Cheng et al. 2011; Zhang et al. 2012).”
• The standard flare model in three dimensions - III. Slip-running reconnection properties (2013, background): “Among these signatures are the formation of the flux rope (e.g. Sakurai 1976; Dere et al. 1999; Cheng et al. 2011, 2013) as well as the flare loops and the flare ribbons (e.g. Schmieder et al. 1996), correlated with the impact of highenergy particles with the chromosphere (e.g. Reid et al. 2012).”
• Observations of Turbulent Magnetic Reconnection within a Solar Current Sheet (2018, background): “The bubble is most likely an edge-on manifestation of the forming flux rope as its axis is mostly along the line-of-sight (Cheng et al. 2011).”
• DIFFERENTIAL EMISSION MEASURE ANALYSIS OF MULTIPLE STRUCTURAL COMPONENTS OF CORONAL MASS EJECTIONS IN THE INNER CORONA (2012, background): “The quantitative results from the DEM analysis further support our previous result based on a qualitative argument: a CME consists of a high temperature flux rope and a cooler LF (Cheng et al. 2011).”