The Role of a Flux Rope Ejection in Three-dimensional Magnetohydrodynamic Simulation of a Solar Flare

TL;DR

This study extends 2D solar flare simulations to 3D, revealing that flux rope ejections enhance reconnection rates and produce turbulence, aligning with observed solar flare behaviors.

Contribution

It demonstrates that the plasmoid-induced reconnection model applies to 3D simulations, showing increased ejection speeds and reconnection rates compared to 2D models.

Findings

3D simulations show larger flux rope ejection speeds and reconnection rates.

Small-scale plasmoids inside current sheets cause turbulence and intermittent reconnection.

3D flux rope evolution differs from 2D, especially for strongly twisted flux ropes.

Abstract

We investigated the dynamic evolution of a 3-dimensional (3D) flux rope eruption and magnetic reconnection process in a solar flare, by simply extending 2-dimensional (2D) resistive magnetohydrodynamic simulation model of solar flares with low $\beta$ plasma to 3D model. We succeeded in reproducing a current sheet and bi-directional reconnection outflows just below the flux rope during the eruption in our 3D simulations. We calculated four cases of a strongly twisted flux rope and a weakly twisted flux rope in 2D and 3D simulations. The time evolution of a weakly twisted flux rope in 3D simulation shows similar behaviors to 2D simulation, while a strongly twisted flux rope in 3D simulation shows clearly different time evolution from 2D simulation except for the initial phase evolution. The ejection speeds of both strongly and weakly twisted flux ropes in 3D simulations are larger than 2D simulations, and the reconnection rates in 3D cases are also larger than 2D cases. This indicates a positive feedback between the ejection speed of a flux rope and the reconnection rate even in the 3D simulation, and we conclude that the plasmoid-induced reconnection model can be applied to 3D. We also found that small scale plasmoids are formed inside a current sheet and make it turbulent. These small scale plasmoid ejections has role in locally increasing reconnection rate intermittently as observed in solar flares, coupled with a global eruption of a flux rope.