How did a Major Confined Flare Occur in Super Solar Active Region 12192?

Abstract

We study the physical mechanism of a major X-class solar flare that occurred in the super NOAA active region (AR) 12192 using a data-driven numerical magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) modeling complemented with observations. With the evolving magnetic fields observed at the solar surface as bottom boundary input, we drive an MHD system to evolve self-consistently in correspondence with the realistic coronal evolution. During a two-day time interval, the modeled coronal field has been slowly stressed by the photospheric field evolution,which gradually created a large-scale coronal current sheet, i.e., a narrow layer with intense current, in the core of the AR. The current layer was successively enhanced until it became so thin that a tether-cutting reconnection between the sheared magnetic arcades was set in, which led to a flare. The modeled reconnecting field lines and their footpoints match well the observed hot flaring loops and the flare ribbons, respectively, suggesting that the model has successfully "reproduced" the macroscopic magnetic process of the flare. In particular, with simulation, we explained why this event is a confined eruption-the consequent of the reconnection is the shared arcade instead of a newly formed flux rope. We also found much weaker magnetic implosion effect comparing to many other X-class flares

12 pages, 9 figures, accepted by ApJ

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• Successive Homologous Coronal Mass Ejections driven by shearing and converging motions in solar active region NOAA 12371
• Properties of quasi-periodic pulsations in solar flares from a single active region
• Reconstruction of a Large-scale Pre-flare Coronal Current Sheet Associated with an Homologous X-shaped Flare
• Data-Optimized Coronal Field Model: I. Proof of Concept
• Probing Subsurface Flows in Active Region NOAA 12192 - Comparison with NOAA 10486
• An application of the weighted horizontal magnetic gradient to solar compact and eruptive events