Current and Current Sheets in the Solar Corona and their Relation to Solar Eruptions
Thursday, 26 May 2016: 10:00 AM
Joerg Buechner1,2, Jan Skala1,3 and Hantao Ji2,4, (1)Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research, Katlenburg-Lindau, Germany, (2)Max-Planck-Princeton Center for Plasma Physics, Princeton, NJ, United States, (3)Astronomical Observatory of the Academy of Sciences, Ondrejov, Czech Republic, (4)Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, Princeton, NJ, United States
Abstract:
Solar eruptions usually start as an instability of flux ropes in the corona. Magnetic flux ropes are supposed to be related to currents in the corona. Unfortunately, coronal currents cannot be measured directly. They can be approximately obtained, however, by numerical simulations based on observations of photospheric magnetic fields. We present current simulation results revealing the currents in coronal flux ropes prior and at the moment of an eruption. It appears that the creation of torodial and poloidal current channels play a crucial role in creating the magnetic forces causing a global flux rope instability behind a Solar eruption. These results are compared and validated by the results of current laboratory eruption experiments [Myers et al., Nature, Dec 2015].
