Recently, a paper by Ying Meng, Lin Jun et. al. was accepted by ApJ. The paper is titled "An MHD Model for Magnetar Giant Flares", and is another example of successfully applying the Lin-Forbes model to an astrophysical phenomenon. It is an extension of previous work (2009, ApJ 395,2183).

　　Coronal mass ejection is a solar activity which can rapidly eject magnetized plasma via magnetic fields. In this process, large amounts of magnetic field energy is released, and converted into other forms of energy. Other similar processes have been seen in other celestial bodies, such as flares from magnetic neutron stars, or sporadic jets emanating from black hole accretion disks. However, the details of such phenomena are poorly understood. In the paper, the authors take relativistic effects into account, and successfully reproduce the observational aspects of magnetic neutron star flares SGR 1806-20, SGR 0526-66, and SGR 1900+14. They also obtain empirical equations concerning the conversion of magnetic field energy to other forms of energy, and point out that a fireball is a natural result of this model.

　　This project was funded by National Natural Science Foundation of China grants #11273055, #11333007, #2013CBA01500, and #2011CB811403.

　　The paper may be cited as follows:

　　Meng Y., Lin J., Zhang L., Reeves K. K., Zhang Q.S. and Yuan F., "MHD Model for Magnetar Giant Flares" 2014, ApJ 785, 62