Simulating Rayleigh-Taylor induced magnetohydrodynamic turbulence in prominences

TL;DR

This study uses high-resolution 2.5D MHD simulations to explore how Rayleigh-Taylor instability drives turbulence in solar prominences, revealing anisotropic turbulence, power-law scalings, and intermittency consistent with observations.

Contribution

It provides the first detailed statistical analysis of RT-induced turbulence in prominences using high-resolution simulations, linking instability dynamics to observed turbulent features.

Findings

Dominant $B_z$ component induces vertical velocity structures.

Power-law scalings observed in velocity, magnetic, and temperature fields.

Intermittency and multifractality confirmed in turbulence statistics.

Abstract

Solar prominences represent large-scale condensations suspended against gravity within the solar atmosphere. The Rayleigh-Taylor (RT) instability is proposed to be one of the important fundamental processes leading to the generation of dynamics at many spatial and temporal scales within these long-lived, cool, and dense structures amongst the solar corona. We run 2.5D ideal magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) simulations with the open-source MPI-AMRVAC code far into the nonlinear evolution of an RT instability perturbed at the prominence-corona interface. Our simulation achieves a resolution down to $\sim 23$ km on a 2D $(x,y)$ domain of size 30 Mm $\times$ 30 Mm. We follow the instability transitioning from a multi-mode linear perturbation to its nonlinear, fully turbulent state. Over the succeeding $\sim 25$ minute period, we perform a statistical analysis of the prominence at a cadence of $\sim 0.858$ s. We find the dominant guiding $B_z$ component induces coherent structure formation predominantly in the vertical velocity $V_y$ component, consistent with observations, demonstrating an anisotropic turbulence state within our prominence. We find power-law scalings in the inertial range for the velocity, magnetic, and temperature fields. The presence of intermittency is evident from the probability density functions of the field fluctuations, which depart from Gaussianity as we consider smaller and smaller scales. In exact agreement, the higher-order structure functions quantify the multifractality, in addition to different scale characteristics and behavior between the longitudinal and transverse directions. Thus, the statistics remain consistent with the conclusions from previous observational studies, enabling us to directly relate the RT instability to the turbulent characteristics found within quiescent prominence.