Failed Solar Eruption of a Multithermal Flux Rope

Abstract

A magnetic flux rope (FR), hosting hot plasma, is thought to be central to the physics of coronal mass ejections. Such FRs are widely observed with passbands of the Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (AIA) on board the Solar Dynamics Observatory that are sensitive to emission from the hot plasma around 10 MK. In contrast, observations of warmer (around 1 MK) counterparts of FRs are sparse. In this study, we report the failed eruption of a multithermal FR, hosting both hot and warm plasma. On 2015 May 1, a hot channel appeared in the AIA high-temperature passbands out of the southeastern solar limb to the south of a nearby flare, and then erupted outward. During the eruption, it rotated perpendicular to the erupting direction. The hot channel stopped erupting, and disappeared gradually, showing a failed eruption. During the hot channel eruption, a warm channel appeared sequentially in the AIA low-temperature passbands. It underwent a similar evolution, including the failed eruption, rotation, and disappearance, to the hot channel. A bright compression front is formed in front of the warm channel eruption in AIA low-temperature images. Under the hot and warm channel eruptions, a small flare occurred, upon which several current sheets, connecting the erupting channels and the underneath flare, formed in the AIA high-temperature passbands. Investigating the spatial and temporal relation between the hot and warm channels, we suggest that both channels twist together, constituting the same multithermal FR that has plasma with the high and low temperatures.

Heating of Quiescent Coronal Loops Caused by Nearby Eruptions Observed with the Solar Dynamics Observatory and the Solar Upper Transition Region Imager

“…It erupted toward the northeast; see the online animated version of Figure 3. The erupting structure shows a channel-like configuration with a mean temperature of ∼2 MK, consistent with the warm channel reported in Li et al (2022).…”

“…A magnetic flux rope is a coherent helical structure along a polarity inversion line (PIL), with field lines wound around a central axis (Liu et al 2016;Li et al 2022). It is a multithermal feature, which could consist of a filament (prominence; Mackay et al 2010;Li & Zhang 2013;Li et al 2021c), warm channel (Song et al 2022;Li et al 2022), and hot channel (Cheng et al 2012;Li et al 2016b).…”

“…Similar to the widely investigated hot channel, the warm channel here also shows a coherently elongated channel-like structure. However, it appears in the passbands that sample plasma at temperatures around 1 MK, rather than the high-temperature passbands in which the hot channel is observed (see more details in Song et al 2022;Li et al 2022). Flux ropes sometimes erupt (Zhou et al 2003;Shen et al 2012;Yan et al 2013;Li et al 2016a).…”

Dynamics of Threads Wrapping a Filament's Leg Prior to the Eruption on 2021 October 28

“…Kliem et al (2014) verified the existence of complex double-decker flux rope configurations in solar eruptive events. Furthermore, some filaments manifest as a multithermal magnetic flux rope (Li et al 2022b). During the partial eruption of a filament, Yang et al (2023) reported that the magnetic topology of the filament is composed of three magnetic flux ropes with different twists.…”

Data-driven Radiative Magnetohydrodynamics Simulations with the MURaM Code

“…A common practice, which seems to be an intuitive option under the frozen-in condition, is to follow magnetic field lines that are cospatial (when projected) with the emission features in images. However, plasma hosted in a magnetic structure (e.g., a flux rope) can be multi-thermal, as found in numerical models and observations (e.g., Cheng et al 2014;Xia & Keppens 2016;Li et al 2022;Wang et al 2022, and references therein). Although general agreement is quite often found between selected magnetic field lines and observed emission features on large scales, the gap between the simulated and real magnetic fields might be larger than expected because the emission structures (usually seen in a particular passband) only reveal limited details of magnetic topology.…”