Numerical Study on In-Situ Prominence Formation by Radiative Condensation in the Solar Corona

TL;DR

This study uses 2.5D magnetohydrodynamics simulations to demonstrate in-situ formation of solar prominences via radiative condensation within flux ropes, matching observed prominence densities and emission patterns.

Contribution

It introduces a self-consistent model showing how magnetic topology changes trigger radiative condensation, leading to prominence formation with realistic density and emission characteristics.

Findings

Radiative condensation occurs due to magnetic topology changes and thermal imbalance.

The model reproduces observed prominence densities 10-100 times coronal density.

Simulated EUV emissions match observed intensity shifts during condensation.

Abstract

We propose an in-situ formation model for inverse-polarity solar prominence and demonstrate it using self-consistent 2.5-dimensional magnetohydrodynamics simulations, including thermal conduction along magnetic fields and optically thin radiative cooling. The model enables us to form cool dense plasma clouds inside a flux rope by radiative condensation, which is regarded as an inverse-polarity prominence. Radiative condensation is triggered by changes in the magnetic topology, i.e., formation of the flux rope from the sheared arcade field, and by thermal imbalance due to the dense plasma trapped inside the flux rope. The flux rope is created by imposing converging and shearing motion on the arcade field. Either when the footpoint motion is in the anti-shearing direction or when heating is proportional to local density, the thermal state inside the flux rope becomes cooling-dominant, leading to radiative condensation. By controlling the temperature of condensation, we investigate the relationship between the temperature and density of prominence and derive a scaling formula for this relationship. This formula suggests that the proposed model reproduce the observed density of prominence, which is 10-100 times larger than the coronal density. Moreover, the time evolution of the extreme ultraviolet emission synthesized by combining our simulation results with the response function of the Solar Dynamics Observatory Atmospheric Imaging Assembly filters agrees with the observed temporal and spatial intensity shift among multi-wavelength during in-situ condensation.