Collaborative Research: Testing a New Concept for the Long-term Build-up to Coronal Mass Ejections

California Institute Of Technology, Pasadena CA

Investigators

Abstract

The Principal Investigator (PI) has assembled an international collaboration to test whether coronal mass ejection (CME) build-up can be ascribed to a four-stage process of magnetic field evolution that ultimately leads to the triggering of a CME. This four stage process consists of (1) canceling of magnetic fields along a polarity reversal boundary; (2) formation of a filament channel concurrent with the ascent of horizontal magnetic field into the chromosphere from cancellation sites; (3) thread-by-thread formation of a filament magnetic field and visible filament when the filament channel attains maximum development; and finally, (4) thread-by-thread building of the filament cavity magnetic field as mass drains from the visible threads, thereby incrementally releasing filament magnetic field into the cavity magnetic field until one of many possible triggering mechanisms initiates the CME. The PI's team will examine these distinct stages and the mechanisms linking them, taking advantage of the synergy offered by new observations, data analysis, numerical modeling, analytic theory, and laboratory plasma experiments. The PI's team expects this project to provide a greatly improved understanding of how CMEs originate and evolve. This improved knowledge of the CME environment is needed to develop predictive tools so that critical space weather events can be accurately forecast.