Explosive Instability of Prominence Flux Ropes

摘要

The rapid, Alfvenic, time scale of erupting solar-prominences has been an enigma ever since they where first identified. Investigators have proposed a variety of different mechanisms in an effort to account for the abrupt reconfiguration observed. No one mechanism clearly stands out as the single cause of these explosive events. Recent analysis has demonstrated that field lines in the solar atmosphere are metastable to ballooning type instabilities. It has been found previously that in ideal MHD plasmas marginally unstable ballooning modes inevitably become explosive evolving towards a finite time singularity via a nonlinear 3D instability called Nonlinear Magnetohydrodynamic Detonation. Thus, this mechanism is a good candidate to explain explosive events observed in the solar atmosphere of our star or in others.