Magnetohydrodynamic Simulations for Studying Solar Flare Trigger Mechanism

Abstract

In order to understand the flare trigger mechanism, we conducted three-dimensional magnetohydrodynamic simulations using a coronal magnetic field model derived from data observed by the Hinode satellite. Several types of magnetic bipoles were imposed into the photospheric boundary of the Non-linear Force-Free Field (NLFFF) model of Active Region NOAA 10930 on 2006 December 13 to investigate what kind of magnetic disturbance may trigger the flare. As a result, we confirm that certain small bipole fields, which emerge into the highly sheared global magnetic field of an active region, can effectively trigger a flare. These bipole fields can be classified into two groups based on their orientation relative to the polarity inversion line: the so called opposite polarity (OP) and reversed shear (RS) structures as it was suggested by Kusano et al. (2012). We also investigated the structure of the footpoints of reconnected field lines. By comparing the distribution of reconstructed field lines and the observed flare ribbons, the trigger structure of the flare can be inferred. Our simulation suggests that the data-constrained simulation taking into account both the large-scale magnetic structure and the small-scale magnetic disturbance such as emerging fluxes is a good way to find out a flare productive active region for space weather prediction.

28 pages, 10 figures

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• The Solar Optical Telescope for the Hinode Mission: An Overview
• Torus instability
• Non-linear force-free field modeling of a solar active region around the time of a major flare and coronal mass ejection
• High-resolution observations of flare precursors in the low solar atmosphere
• Magnetohydrodynamic Simulation of the X2.2 Solar Flare on 2011 February 15: I. Comparison with the Observations
• Comparison between Hinode/SOT and SDO/HMI, AIA Data for the Study of the Solar Flare Trigger Process

Cited by in corpus (5)

• Flare-productive active regions
• Comparative Study of Data-driven Solar Coronal Field Models Using a Flux Emergence Simulation as a Ground-truth Data Set
• Solar Flares Complex Networks
• Data-driven MHD simulation of successive solar plasma eruptions
• MHD Simulation of Homologous Eruptions from Solar Active Region 10930 Caused by Sunspot Rotation