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Photospheric and Coronal Observations of Abrupt Magnetic Restructuring in Two Flaring Active Regions

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Abstract

For two major X-class flares observed by the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) and the Solar TErrestrial RElations Observatory Ahead (STEREO-A) spacecraft when they were close to quadrature, we compare major, abrupt changes in the photospheric magnetic vector field to changes in the observed coronal magnetic structure during the two flares. The Lorentz force changes in strong photospheric fields within active regions are estimated from time series of SDO Helioseismic and Magnetic Imager (HMI) vector magnetograms. These show that the major changes occurred in each case near the main neutral line of the region and in two neighboring twisted opposite-polarity sunspots. In each case the horizontal parallel field strengthened significantly near the neutral line while the azimuthal field in the sunspots decreased, suggesting that a flux rope joining the two sunspots collapsed across the neutral line with reduced magnetic pressure because of a reduced field twist component. At the same time, the coronal extreme ultraviolet (EUV) loop structure was observed by the Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (AIA) onboard SDO and the Extreme Ultraviolet Imager (EUVI) on STEREO-A to decrease significantly in height during each eruption, discontinuous changes signifying ejection of magnetized plasma, and outward-propagating continuous but abrupt changes consistent with loop contraction. An asymmetry in the observed EUV loop changes during one of the flares matches an asymmetry in the photospheric magnetic changes associated with that flare. The observations are discussed in terms of the well-known tether-cutting and breakout flare initiation models.

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  1. http://jsoc.stanford.edu .

  2. http://sdac.virtualsolar.org .

  3. http://www.lmsal.com/solarsoft/ .

  4. http://cdaw.gsfc.nasa.gov .

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Acknowledgements

I thank the referee for helpful and constructive comments. This work was supported by NASA grant NNX14AE05G to the National Solar Observatory. SDO is a mission for NASA’s Living With a Star program. Data courtesy of NASA/SDO and the HMI and AIA science teams. The STEREO/SECCHI data used here are produced by an international consortium of the Naval Research Laboratory (USA), Lockheed Martin Solar and Astrophysics Lab (USA), NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (USA), Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (UK), University of Birmingham (UK), Max-Planck-Institut für Sonnensystemforschung (Germany), Centre Spatiale de Liége (Belgium), Institut d’Optique Théorique et Appliquée (France), and Institut d’Astrophysique Spatiale (France). RHESSI is a NASA Small Explorer.

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    G. J. D. Petrie

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Petrie, G.J.D. Photospheric and Coronal Observations of Abrupt Magnetic Restructuring in Two Flaring Active Regions. Sol Phys 291, 791–821 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11207-016-0873-6

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