A Prominence Eruption Driven by Flux Feeding from Chromospheric Fibrils

TL;DR

This study observes a prominence eruption driven by flux feeding from chromospheric fibrils, highlighting a potential mechanism for triggering coronal eruptions through magnetic flux transfer.

Contribution

It provides multi-wavelength evidence that flux feeding from chromospheric fibrils can initiate prominence eruptions and associated coronal mass ejections.

Findings

Fibril perturbations caused prominence oscillations and faster rise.

Eruption involved flux interactions with side-arcades and twin CMEs.

Absence of intense heating suggests ideal instability as trigger.

Abstract

We present multi-wavelength observations of a prominence eruption originating from a quadrupolar field configuration, in which the prominence was embedded in a side-arcade. Within the two-day period prior to its eruption on 2012 October 22, the prominence was perturbed three times by chromospheric fibrils underneath, which rose upward, became brightened, and merged into the prominence, resulting in horizontal flows along the prominence axis, suggesting that the fluxes carried by the fibrils were incorporated into the magnetic field of the prominence. These perturbations caused the prominence to oscillate and to rise faster than before. The absence of intense heating within the first two hours after the onset of the prominence eruption, which followed an exponential increase in height, indicates that ideal instability played a crucial role. The eruption involved interactions with the other side-arcade, leading up to a twin coronal mass ejection, which was accompanied by transient surface brightenings in the central arcade, followed by transient dimmings and brightenings in the two side-arcades. We suggest that flux feeding from chromospheric fibrils might be an important mechanism to trigger coronal eruptions.