In a recent study published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Dr. MEI Zhixing from Yunnan Observatories of Chinese Academy of Sciences and his colleagues presented a high-resolution 3D magnetohydrodynamics(MHD) numerical simulation to investigate bimodality nature of the extreme ultraviolet (EUV) disturbances in the corona during eruption of the solar prominence/filament.

Research on the EUV disturbances during the solar eruption has been going on for more than two decades. At present, researchers tend to accept a so-called bimodality interpretation that the EUV disturbances have both wave and non-wave components. The wave component is fast magneto-acoustic shock (FS) in front of the eruptive magnetic structure, and the non-wave component is associated with the coronal mass ejection (CME) bubble structure.

MEI Zhixing and his colleagues carried out a 3D MHD numerical simulation based on the flux-rope model of the prominence/filament eruption, and obtained corresponding synthetic image of Solar Dynamics Observatory/Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (SDO / AIA) of the numerical results, so that they can directly compare their numerical results with the observation datum. Their work enrichs the bimodality interpretation.

In the synthetic AIA image, they observed the heating of the bright fast-mode shock (FS) hemispherical front and the behind prominence/filament material. Between the prominence and the FS, a dark dimming region appears. During the evolution process, the magnetic structure of the prominence continued to expand, its brightness continued to decay, and eventually disappeared in the dark area.

If observing this process from the edge of the solar surface, the synthetic image of the EUV disturbance supports the bimodality interpretation of the EUV disturbances. However, when observing the above process near the center of the sun, the synthetic image does not support this interpretation, because the shape of the bright prominence does not have the typical quasi-circular features.

In addition, looking from the side of the CME, they also identified the slow mode shock, velocity vortex and echo of the fast mode shock in the velocity distribution. Among them, the slow mode shock is related to a three-dimensional velocity separatrix. However, these results belong to the fine structure of the magnetic field configuration during the solar eruption. These results have not been recognized in the current observation results, because of the technical level and resolution of the observation results is not enough. They look forward to future high-resolution observations that can help verify these details.

Contact:

MEI Zhixing,YNAO,CAS
meizhixing@ynao.ac.cn