Abstract
The associations of flares to flux emergence and cancellation have been further examined and clarified with the aid of complete time sequences of vector magnetograms of an active region for a 4-day period around the central meridian passage.
It is found that the emergence of new flux and its driven flux cancellation with existing flux is a wholly inseparable, elementary process in the active region, favorable for flare occurence. The early discovery ofstructures magnetique evolutive (Martreset al., 1968) is confirmed and identified to be the net result of this process.
All events of flux cancellation appear in the interface of two topologically separated magnetic loops. Direct indications of magnetic reconnection between two cancelling components in the photospheric layer are identified. The cancellation is most likely a slow reconnection in the lower atmosphere of the Sun. The quite popular view of interpreting flux cancellation as a pure flux submergence could not fit the magnetic topology learned from alignments of the transverse magnetic field. In this sense, the association of flares to flux cancellation seems to represent a coupling of the slow reconnection in the lower atmosphere to the fast reconnection higher in the corona.
This slow reconnection can even take place below the photosphere. In one case, an inferred sub-photospheric reconnection eventually prevents one pole of an emerging flux region with the polarity opposite to the background from showing up at the photospheric level.
Six of all eight flares which appeared in this period are spatially and temporally associated with the emergence of new flux and its driven cancellation. They might be divided into two groups. The first group of flares appears at the early phase of flux emergence and in close proximity to the cancelling site between new and old flux; the second ones appear after several hours of flux cancellation, centering around the cancelling site.
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Wang, J., Shi, Z. The flare-associated magnetic changes in an active region. Sol Phys 143, 119–139 (1993). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00619100
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00619100