Modeling a Coronal Mass Ejection from an Extended Filament Channel. I. Eruption and Early Evolution

TL;DR

This paper presents a combined observational and MHD simulation study of a large-scale filament eruption and CME, providing new insights into the eruption's magnetic evolution and challenging the classification of stealth CMEs.

Contribution

It offers the first comprehensive numerical modeling of a global filament eruption with complex observational signatures, linking EUV and white-light data.

Findings

Magnetic field evolution matches observations

Reconnection flux estimated from simulations

Eruption signatures form a continuum, not distinct classes

Abstract

We present observations and modeling of the magnetic field configuration, morphology, and dynamics of a large-scale, high-latitude filament eruption observed by the Solar Dynamics Observatory. We analyze the 2015 July 9-10 filament eruption and the evolution of the resulting coronal mass ejection (CME) through the solar corona. The slow streamer-blowout CME leaves behind an elongated post-eruption arcade above the extended polarity inversion line that is only poorly visible in extreme ultraviolet (EUV) disk observations and does not resemble a typical bright flare-loop system. Magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) simulation results from our data-inspired modeling of this eruption compare favorably with the EUV and white-light coronagraph observations. We estimate the reconnection flux from the simulation's flare-arcade growth and examine the magnetic-field orientation and evolution of the erupting prominence, highlighting the transition from an erupting sheared-arcade filament channel into a streamer-blowout flux-rope CME. Our results represent the first numerical modeling of a global-scale filament eruption where multiple ambiguous and complex observational signatures in EUV and white light can be fully understood and explained with the MHD simulation. In this context, our findings also suggest that the so-called "stealth CME" classification, as a driver of unexpected or "problem" geomagnetic storms, belongs more to a continuum of observable/non-observable signatures than to separate or distinct eruption processes.