Instability

Abstract

Questions of stability and instability are important for many solar phenomena. Sometimes one needs to explain how a structure can remain stable for a long period of time, when preliminary theoretical considerations may suggest it should be unstable. For instance, the Sun seems to maintain stability of a solar prominence or a coronal loop with great ease, in contrast to the immense difficulty of containing plasmas in the laboratory. At other times, one wants to understand why magnetic structures on the Sun suddenly become unstable and produce events of great beauty such as erupting prominences or solar flares.