Numerical Experiments of Wave-Like Phenomena Caused by the Disruption of an Unstable Magnetic Configuration

TL;DR

This study uses numerical simulations to explore how magnetic flux rope disruptions can generate wave-like phenomena such as Moreton and EIT waves, linking these to shocks and vortices in the solar atmosphere.

Contribution

It provides a detailed numerical model connecting magnetic flux rope disruptions to observed solar wave phenomena, highlighting the roles of shocks and vortices.

Findings

Fast shocks produce echoes in the corona linked to Moreton waves.

Slow shocks and vortices decay before reaching the lower boundary.

EIT waves are associated with slower disturbances from the flux rope.

Abstract

The origin of the Moreton wave observed in the chromosphere and the EIT wave observed in the corona during the eruption remains being an active research subject for a while. We investigate numerically in this work the evolutionary features of the magnetic configuration that includes a current-carrying flux rope, which is used to model the filament, after the loss of equilibrium in the system takes place in a catastrophic fashion. Rapid motions of the flux rope following the catastrophe invokes the velocity vortices behind the rope, and may invoke as well slow and fast mode shocks in front of the rope. The velocity vortices at each side of the flux rope propagate roughly horizontally away from the area where it is produced, and both shocks expand toward the flank of the flux rope. The fast one may eventually reach the bottom boundary and produces two echoes moving back into the corona, but the slow one and the vortices totally decay somewhere in the lower corona before arriving the bottom boundary. The interaction of the fast shock with the boundary leads to disturbance that accounts for the Moreton wave observed in Halpha, and the disturbance in the corona caused by the slow shock and the velocity vortices should account for the EIT wave whose speed is about 40% that of the Moreton wave. Implication of these results to the observed correlation of the type II radio burst to the fast and the slow mode shocks, and that of EIT waves to CMEs and flares have also been discussed.