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Register a new userMagnetic Systems Triggering the M6.6-class Solar Flare in NOAA Active Region 11158
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We report a detailed event analysis on the M6.6-class flare in the active region (AR) NOAA 11158 on 2011 February 13. AR 11158, which consisted of two major emerging bipoles, showed prominent activities including one X- and several M-class flares. In order to investigate the magnetic structures related to the M6.6 event, particularly the formation process of a flare-triggering magnetic region, we analyzed multiple spacecraft observations and numerical results of a flare simulation. We observed that, in the center of this quadrupolar AR, a highly sheared polarity inversion line (PIL) was formed through proper motions of the major magnetic elements, which built a sheared coronal arcade lying over the PIL. The observations lend support to the interpretation that the target flare was triggered by a localized magnetic region that had an intrusive structure, namely a positive polarity penetrating into a negative counterpart. The geometrical relationship between the sheared coronal arcade and the triggering region was consistent with the theoretical flare model based on the previous numerical study. We found that the formation of the trigger region was due to a continuous accumulation of the small-scale magnetic patches. A few hours before the flare occurrence, the series of emerged/advected patches reconnected with a preexisting fields. Finally, the abrupt flare eruption of the M6.6 event started around 17:30 UT. Our analysis suggests that, in a triggering process of a flare activity, all magnetic systems of multiple scales, not only the entire AR evolution but also the fine magnetic elements, are altogether involved.
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Solar Active Region NOAA 11158 has hosted a number of strong flares, including one X2.2 event. The complexity of current density and current helicity are studied through cancellation analysis of their sign-singular measure, which features power-law scaling. Spectral analysis is also performed, revealing the presence of two separate scaling ranges with different spectral index. The time evolution of parameters is discussed. Sudden changes of the cancellation exponents at the time of large flares, and the presence of correlation with EUV and X-ray flux, suggest that eruption of large flares can be linked to the small scale properties of the current structures.
The solar magnetic field in a flare-producing active region (AR) is much more complicated than theoretical models, which assume a very simple magnetic field structure. The X1.0 flare, which occurred in AR 12192 on 2014 October 25, showed a complicated three-ribbon structure. To clarify the trigger process of the flare and to evaluate the applicability of a simple theoretical model, we analyzed the data from Hinode/Solar Optical Telescope and the Solar Dynamics Observatory/Helioseismic and Magnetic Imager, Atmospheric Imaging Assembly. We investigated the spatio-temporal correlation between the magnetic field structures, especially the non-potentiality of the horizontal field, and the bright structures in the solar atmosphere. As a result, we determined that the western side of the positive polarity, which is intruding on a negative polarity region, is the location where the flare was triggered. This is due to the fact that the sign of the magnetic shear in that region was opposite that of the major shear of the AR, and the significant brightenings were observed over the polarity inversion line (PIL) in that region before flare onset. These features are consistent with the recently proposed flare-trigger model that suggests that small reversed shear (RS) magnetic disturbances can trigger solar flares. Moreover, we found that the RS field was located slightly off the flaring PIL, contrary to the theoretical prediction. We discuss the possibility of an extension of the RS model based on an extra numerical simulation. Our result suggests that the RS field has a certain flexibility for displacement from a highly sheared PIL, and that the RS field triggers more flares than we expected.
We present a comparison of the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) analysis of NOAA Active Region (AR) 11158 and numerical simulations of flux-tube emergence, aiming to investigate the formation process of this flare-productive AR. First, we use SDO/Helioseismic and Magnetic Imager (HMI) magnetograms to investigate the photospheric evolution and Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (AIA) data to analyze the relevant coronal structures. Key features of this quadrupolar region are a long sheared polarity inversion line (PIL) in the central delta-sunspots and a coronal arcade above the PIL. We find that these features are responsible for the production of intense flares, including an X2.2-class event. Based on the observations, we then propose two possible models for the creation of AR 11158 and conduct flux-emergence simulations of the two cases to reproduce this AR. Case 1 is the emergence of a single flux tube, which is split into two in the convection zone and emerges at two locations, while Case 2 is the emergence of two isolated but neighboring tubes. We find that, in Case 1, a sheared PIL and a coronal arcade are created in the middle of the region, which agrees with the AR 11158 observation. However, Case 2 never builds a clear PIL, which deviates from the observation. Therefore, we conclude that the flare-productive AR 11158 is, between the two cases, more likely to be created from a single split emerging flux than from two independent flux bundles.
The magnetic field plays a key role in producing solar flares, so that the investigation on the relationship between the magnetic field properties and flares is significant. In this paper, based on the magnetic field extrapolated from the photospheric vector magnetograms of the active region NOAA 9077 obtained at Huairou Solar Observing Station, the magnetic field parameters including the height of field lines, force-free factor, free magnetic energy and inclination angle were studied with respect to an X-class flare in this region. We found that the magnetic field lines became lower and the ratio of number of closed field lines to those of open field lines increased after the flare. The force-free factor ($alpha$) attained a large value before the flare and then decreased after the flare for the closed field lines, while the open field lines showed the opposite tendency. Free energy reach to maximum before flare, then decrease after flare. The magnetic inclination angles showed opposite change trends after the flare for closed and open field lines. Therefore, we may conclude that non-potential energy released by flare mostly contained in the closed magnetic field lines.
How much electromagnetic energy crosses the photosphere in evolving solar active regions? With the advent of high-cadence vector magnetic field observations, addressing this fundamental question has become tractable. In this paper, we apply the PTD-Doppler-FLCT-Ideal (PDFI) electric field inversion technique of Kazachenko et al. (2014) to a 6-day HMI/SDO vector magnetogram and Doppler velocity sequence, to find the electric field and Poynting flux evolution in active region NOAA 11158, which produced an X2.2 flare early on 2011 February 15. We find photospheric electric fields ranging up to $2$ V/cm. The Poynting fluxes range from $[-0.6$ to $2.3]times10^{10}$ ergs$cdot$cm$^{-2}$s$^{-1}$, mostly positive, with the largest contribution to the energy budget in the range of $[10^9$-$10^{10}]$ ergs$cdot$cm$^{-2}$s$^{-1}$. Integrating the instantaneous energy flux over space and time, we find that the total magnetic energy accumulated above the photosphere from the initial emergence to the moment before the X2.2 flare to be $E=10.6times10^{32}$ ergs, which is partitioned as $2.0$ and $8.6times10^{32}$ ergs, respectively, between free and potential energies. Those estimates are consistent with estimates from preflare non-linear force-free field (NLFFF) extrapolations and the Minimum Current Corona estimates (MCC), in spite of our very different approach. This study of photospheric electric fields demonstrates the potential of the PDFI approach for estimating Poynting fluxes and opens the door to more quantitative studies of the solar photosphere and more realistic data-driven simulations of coronal magnetic field evolution.
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