Austrian Early Career Conference 2024

Contribution:
Talk

Authors:
Andreas Wagner [1,2]; Slava Bourgeois [3,4]; Emilia K. J. Kilpua [1]; Ranadeep Sarkar [1]; Daniel J. Price [1]; Anshu Kumari [5]; Jens Pomoell [1]; Stefaan Poedts [2,6]; Teresa Barata [3]; Robertus Erdélyi [4,7,8]; Orlando Oliveira [3]; Ricardo Gafeira [3]

Affiliations:
1: University of Helsinki; 2: KU Leuven; 3: University of Coimbra; 4: University of Sheffield; 5: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center; 6: University of Maria Curie-Skłodowska; 7: Eötvös Loránd University; 8: Gyula Bay Zoltan Solar Observatory

Title:
Solar Magnetic Flux Ropes and their Early-Stage Evolution

Abstract:
Solar eruptions can affect our technology and life on Earth significantly. The fundamental, underlying structure is a magnetic flux rope – a bundle of magnetic field lines which wraps around a common axis. Since we cannot measure the magnetic field in the solar atmosphere, numerically modelling the magnetic field, based on the conditions observed on the solar surface has become the standard approach. However, accessing the fundamental magnetic structures in the simulation data and tracking their evolution is not trivial. To deal with this problem, we developed a semi-automatic flux rope extraction and tracking tool, complemented by a graphical user interface. The method utilizes the twist parameter, which measures the field line twist, together with mathematical morphology algorithms. We apply our method to time-dependent data-driven magnetofrictional simulations of solar active regions AR11176 and AR12473. In doing so, we show the methods performance, as well as study the resulting flux ropes' trajectory through the simulation domain. In particular, we are investigating the deflection of these magnetic structures, as this is a crucial aspect in predicting if and how strongly they will impact Earth.