arXiv subjects

Hiroaki Isobe

Publications and source records attributed to Hiroaki Isobe.

40 records · Page 3Linked to original sources

arXiv2006

Large amplitude oscillation of a polar crown filament in the pre-eruption phase

We report observation of a large-amplitude filament oscillation followed by an eruption. This is used to probe the pre-eruption condition and the trigger mechanism of solar eruptions. We used the EUV images from the Extreme-Ultraviolet Imaging Telescope on board SOHO satellite and the H-alpha images from the Flare Monitoring Telescope at Hida Observatory. The observed event is a polar crown filament that erupted on 15 Oct. 2002. The filament clearly exhibited oscillatory motion in the slow-rising, pre-eruption phase. The amplitude of the oscillation was larger than 20 km/s, and the motion was predominantly horizontal. The period was about 2 hours and seemed to increase during the oscillation, indicating weakening of restoring force. These results strongly indicate that, even in the slow-rise phase before the eruption, the filament retained equilibrium and behaved as an oscillator, and the equilibrium is stable to nonlinear perturbation. Moreover, the transition from such nonlinear stability to either instabilities or a loss of equilibrium that leads to the eruption occurred in the Alfven time scale. This suggests that the onset of the eruption was triggered by a fast magnetic reconnection that stabilized the pre-eruption magnetic configuration, rather than by the slow shearing motion at the photosphere.

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arXiv2005

Self-Consistent MHD Modeling of a Coronal Mass Ejection, Coronal Dimming, and a Giant Cusp-Shaped Arcade Formation

We performed magnetohydrodynamic simulation of coronal mass ejections (CMEs) and associated giant arcade formations, and the results suggested new interpretations of observations of CMEs. We performed two cases of the simulation: with and without heat conduction. Comparing between the results of the two cases, we found that reconnection rate in the conductive case is a little higher than that in the adiabatic case and the temperature of the loop top is consistent with the theoretical value predicted by the Yokoyama-Shibata scaling law. The dynamical properties such as velocity and magnetic fields are similar in the two cases, whereas thermal properties such as temperature and density are very different.In both cases, slow shocks associated with magnetic reconnectionpropagate from the reconnection region along the magnetic field lines around the flux rope, and the shock fronts form spiral patterns. Just outside the slow shocks, the plasma density decreased a great deal. The soft X-ray images synthesized from the numerical results are compared with the soft X-ray images of a giant arcade observed with the Soft X-ray Telescope aboard {\it Yohkoh}, it is confirmed that the effect of heat conduction is significant for the detailed comparison between simulation and observation. The comparison between synthesized and observed soft X-ray images provides new interpretations of various features associated with CMEs and giant arcades.

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arXiv2005

Measurement of the Energy Release Rate and the Reconnection Rate in Solar Flares

By using the method presented by Isobe et al. (2002), the non-dimensional reconnection rate Vin/Va has been determined for the impulsive phase of three two-ribbon flares, where Vin is the velocity of the reconnection inflow and Va is the Alfven velocity. The non-dimensional reconnection rate is important to make a constraint on the theoretical models of magnetic reconnection. In order to reduce the uncertainty of the reconnection rate, it is important to determine the energy release rate of the flares from observational data as accurately as possible. To this end, we have carried out one dimensional hydrodynamic simulations of a flare loop and synthesized the count rate detected by the soft X-ray telescope (SXT) aboard Yohkoh satellite. We found that the time derivative of the thermal energy contents in a flare arcade derived from SXT data is smaller than the real energy release rate by a factor of 0.3 - 0.8, depending on the loop length and the energy release rate. The result of simulation is presented in the paper and used to calculate the reconnection rate. We found that reconnection rate is 0.047 for the X2.3 flare on 2000 November 24, 0.015 for the M3.7 flare on 2000 July 14, and 0.071 for the C8.9 flare on 2000 November 16. These values are similar to that derived from the direct observation of the reconnection inflow by Yokoyama et al. (2001), and consistent with the fast reconnection models such as that of Petschek (1964).

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arXiv2002

Difference between Spatial Distributions of the H-alpha Kernels and Hard X-Ray Sources in a Solar Flare

We present the relation of the spatial distribution of H-alpha kernels with the distribution of hard X-ray (HXR) sources seen during the 2001 April 10 solar flare. This flare was observed in H-alpha with the (Sartorius) telescope at Kwasan Observatory, Kyoto University, and in hard X-rays (HXRs) with the Hard X-ray Telescope (HXT) onboard Yohkoh. We compared the spatial distribution of the HXR sources with that of the H-alpha kernels. While many H-alpha kernels are found to brighten successively during the evolution of the flare ribbons, only a few radiation sources are seen in the HXR images. We measured the photospheric magnetic field strengths at each radiation source in the H-alpha images, and found that the H-alpha kernels accompanied by HXR radiation have magnetic strengths about 3 times larger than those without HXR radiation. We also estimated the energy release rates based on the magnetic reconnection model. The release rates at the H-alpha kernels with accompanying HXR sources are 16-27 times larger than those without HXR sources. These values are sufficiently larger than the dynamic range of HXT, which is about 10, so that the difference between the spatial distributions of the H$α$ kernels and the HXR sources can be explained.

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