Filament eruption with apparent reshuffle of endpoints

TL;DR

This paper analyzes a 2010 filament eruption, revealing a unique reshuffling of endpoints likely caused by magnetic reconnection, and introduces a new initiation mechanism involving combined horizontal and vertical flux displacements.

Contribution

It presents a detailed analysis of a filament eruption with endpoint reshuffling and proposes a novel eruption initiation involving combined flux displacements.

Findings

Filament endpoints reshuffled during eruption, indicating magnetic reconnection.

Filament was stable vertically but unstable horizontally before eruption.

Eruption initiated by combined horizontal and vertical flux displacements.

Abstract

Filament eruption on 30 April - 1 May 2010, which shows the reconnection of one filament leg with a region far away from its initial position, is analyzed. Observations from three viewpoints are used for as precise as possible measurements of endpoint coordinates. The northern leg of the erupting prominence loop 'jumps' laterally to the latitude lower than the latitude of the originally southern endpoint. Thus, the endpoints reshuffled their positions in the limb view. Although this behaviour could be interpreted as the asymmetric zipping-like eruption, it does not look very likely. It seems more likely to be reconnection of the flux-rope field lines in its northern leg with ambient coronal magnetic field lines rooted in a quiet region far from the filament. From calculations of coronal potential magnetic field, we found that the filament before the eruption was stable for vertical displacements, but was liable to violation of the horizontal equilibrium. This is unusual initiation of an eruption with combination of initial horizontal and vertical flux-rope displacements showing a new unexpected possibility for the start of an eruptive event.