Large-scale horizontal flows in the solar photosphere III: Effects on filament destabilization

TL;DR

This study investigates how large-scale horizontal flows in the solar photosphere influence the stability and eruption of solar filaments, revealing a correlation between flow topology changes and filament destabilization.

Contribution

It provides new insights into the coupling between surface flow fields and magnetic structures during filament eruptions using multi-method flow analysis.

Findings

Flow fields are well-correlated across methods on large scales.

Flow topology changes significantly during filament eruption.

Surface flow changes are linked to filament disappearance.

Abstract

We study the influence of large-scale photospheric motions on the estabilization of an eruptive filament, observed on October 6, 7, and 8, 2004, as part of an international observing campaign (JOP 178). Large-scale horizontal flows were invetigated from a series of MDI full-disc Dopplergrams and magnetograms. From the Dopplergrams, we tracked supergranular flow patterns using the local correlation tracking (LCT) technique. We used both LCT and manual tracking of isolated magnetic elements to obtain horizontal velocities from magnetograms. We find that the measured flow fields obtained by the different methods are well-correlated on large scales. The topology of the flow field changed significantly during the filament eruptive phase, suggesting a possible coupling between the surface flow field and the coronal magnetic field. We measured an increase in the shear below the point where the eruption starts and a decrease in shear after the eruption. We find a pattern in the large-scale horizontal flows at the solar surface that interact with differential rotation. We conclude that there is probably a link between changes in surface flow and the disappearance of the eruptive filament.