Responsibility of a Filament Eruption for the Initiation of a Flare, CME, and Blast Wave, and its Possible Transformation into a Bow Shock

TL;DR

This study links filament eruptions to the initiation of flares, CMEs, and shock waves, showing how filament destabilization leads to magnetic reconnection, flux rope expansion, shock formation, and eventual CME development, with detailed observational evidence.

Contribution

It provides a detailed, updated scenario of filament eruption processes leading to CMEs and shocks, including the first observation of shock transitioning into a bow-shock regime.

Findings

Filament destabilization triggers magnetic reconnection and flux rope formation.

Expanding flux ropes produce shocks that can evolve into bow shocks.

Reconnection in remote streamers can cause flare-like phenomena and type II bursts.

Abstract

Multi-instrument observations of two filament eruptions on 24 February and 11 May 2011 suggest the following updated scenario for eruptive flare, CME and shock wave evolution. An initial destabilization of a filament results in stretching out of magnetic threads belonging to its body and rooted in the photosphere along the inversion line. Their reconnection leads to i) heating of parts of the filament or its environment, ii) initial development of the flare arcade cusp and ribbons, and iii) increasing similarity of the filament to a curved flux rope and its acceleration. Then the pre-eruption arcade enveloping the filament gets involved in reconnection according to the standard model and continues to form the flare arcade and ribbons. The poloidal magnetic flux in the curved rope developing from the filament progressively increases and forces its toroidal expansion. This flux rope impulsively expands and produces an MHD disturbance, which rapidly steepens into a shock. The shock passes through the arcade expanding above the filament and then freely propagates ahead of the CME like a decelerating blast wave for some time. If the CME is slow, then the shock eventually decays. Otherwise, the frontal part of the shock changes into the bow-shock regime. This was observed for the first time in the 24 February 2011 event. When reconnection ceases, the flux rope relaxes and constitutes the CME core-cavity system. The expanding arcade develops into the CME frontal structure. We also found that reconnection in the current sheet of a remote streamer forced by the shock's passage results in a running flare-like process within the streamer responsible for a type II burst. The development of dimming and various associated phenomena are discussed.