Flux Rope Formation Due to Shearing and Zipper Reconnection

TL;DR

This paper presents a numerical experiment demonstrating how shearing and zipper reconnection can create a flux rope from initially untwisted flux tubes, elucidating the magnetic flux linkage and helicity conversion involved.

Contribution

It introduces the first numerical simulation of flux rope formation via zipper reconnection from untwisted flux tubes, highlighting the process's magnetic properties.

Findings

Formation of a flux rope from sheared, initially untwisted flux tubes.

Conversion of mutual magnetic helicity into self-helicity during reconnection.

Linkage of magnetic flux between concentrated sources at the base.

Abstract

Zipper reconnection has been proposed as a mechanism for creating most of the twist in the flux tubes that are present prior to eruptive flares and coronal mass ejections. We have conducted a first numerical experiment on this new regime of reconnection, where two initially untwisted parallel flux tubes are sheared and reconnected to form a large flux rope. We describe the properties of this experiment, including the linkage of magnetic flux between concentrated flux sources at the base of the simulation, the twist of the newly formed flux rope and the conversion of mutual magnetic helicity in the sheared pre-reconnection state into the self-helicity of the newly formed flux rope.