Evolution of Morphological Features of CMEs Deduced from Catastrophe Model of Solar Eruptions
Abstract
We investigate the evolution of morphological features during a coronal mass ejection (CME) occurring in a specific magnetic configuration in the present work. The results indicate that part of the magnetic flux and plasma ejected into the heliosphere by a CME exist in the flux rope or prominence prior to the eruption. For the parameters we chose for the present work, our calculations show that more than one third of the ejected plasma is continuously brought by magnetic reconnection from the corona during the eruption, and around a half amount of the poloidal flux, together with the plasma, is collected by reconnection from the coronal magnetic field and then is sent into interplanetary space via the upper tip of the current sheet. The reconnected magnetic flux is able to account for the fast expansion of the ejecta. The temperature of the reconnected plasma is fairly high (up to ∼ 107 K), and blending of this hot plasma with cold prominence material may drive the prominence from absorption to emission in the EUV. This process constitutes a natural and straightforward mechanism for prominence heating during the eruption.
- Publication:
-
AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2003
- Bibcode:
- 2003AGUFMSH22B..04L
- Keywords:
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- 7513 Coronal mass ejections;
- 7519 Flares;
- 7524 Magnetic fields;
- 7531 Prominence eruptions