# Successful and Failed Flux Tube Emergence in the Solar Interior

**Authors:** P. Syntelis, V. Archontis, A. Hood

arXiv: 1902.07969 · 2019-03-27

## TL;DR

This study uses 3D MHD simulations to explore how various parameters influence the emergence of magnetic flux tubes from the solar interior to the surface, revealing complex dependencies beyond initial magnetic strength.

## Contribution

The paper introduces a detailed parametric analysis of flux tube emergence, highlighting the roles of geometry and twist, and identifies scaling laws relating magnetic field strength to local density.

## Key findings

- Emergence efficiency depends on magnetic field strength and morphology.
- Flux tube emergence is not solely determined by initial magnetic flux.
- Scaling laws relate magnetic field strength to local density with a transition near the pressure scale height.

## Abstract

We report on our three-dimensional (3D) magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) simulations of cylindrical weakly twisted flux tubes emerging from 18 Mm below the photosphere. We perform a parametric study, by varying the initial magnetic field strength ($B_0$), radius ($R$), twist ($\alpha)$ and length of the emerging part of the flux tube ($\lambda$) to investigate how these parameters affect the transfer of the magnetic field from the convection zone to the photosphere. We show that the efficiency of emergence at the photosphere (i.e. how strong the photospheric field will be in comparison to $B_0$) depends not only on the $B_0$ but also the morphology of the emerging field and the twist. We show that parameters such as $B_0$ and magnetic flux cannot alone determine whether a flux tube will emerge to the solar surface. For instance, high-$B_0$ (weak-$B_0$) fields may fail (succeed) to emerge at the photosphere, depending on their geometrical properties. We also show that the photospheric magnetic field strength can vary greatly for flux tubes with the same $B_0$ but different geometric properties. Moreover, in some cases we have found scaling laws, whereby the magnetic field strength scales with the local density as $B\propto \rho^\kappa$, where $\kappa \approx 1$ deeper in the convection zone and $\kappa <1$, close to the photosphere. The transition between the two values occurs approximately when the local pressure scale ($H_p$) becomes comparable to the diameter of the flux tube ($H_p\approx2R$). We derive forms to explain how and when these scaling laws appear and compare them with the numerical simulations.

## Full text

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## Figures

14 figures with captions in the complete paper: https://tomesphere.com/paper/1902.07969/full.md

## References

51 references — full list in the complete paper: https://tomesphere.com/paper/1902.07969/full.md

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Source: https://tomesphere.com/paper/1902.07969