Identification

Title

The origin of major solar activity: Collisional shearing between nonconjugated polarities of multiple bipoles emerging within active regions

Abstract

Active regions (ARs) that exhibit compact polarity inversion lines (PILs) are known to be very flare productive. However, the physical mechanisms behind this statistical inference have not been demonstrated conclusively. We show that such PILs can occur owing to the collision between two emerging flux tubes nested within the same AR. In such multipolar ARs, the flux tubes may emerge simultaneously or sequentially, each initially producing a bipolar magnetic region (BMR) at the surface. During each flux tube's emergence phase, the magnetic polarities can migrate such that opposite polarities belonging to different BMRs collide, resulting in shearing and cancellation of magnetic flux. We name this process "collisional shearing" to emphasize that the shearing and flux cancellation develop owing to the collision. Collisional shearing is a process different from the known concept of flux cancellation occurring between polarities of a single bipole, a process that has been commonly used in many numerical models. High spatial and temporal resolution observations from the Solar Dynamics Observatory for two emerging ARs, AR 11158 and AR 12017, show the continuous cancellation of up to 40% of the unsigned magnetic flux of the smallest BMR, which occurs at the collisional PIL for as long as the collision persists. The flux cancellation is accompanied by a succession of solar flares and CMEs, products of magnetic reconnection along the collisional PIL. Our results suggest that the quantification of magnetic cancellation driven by collisional shearing needs to be taken into consideration in order to improve the prediction of solar energetic events and space weather.

Resource type

document

Resource locator

Unique resource identifier

code

http://n2t.net/ark:/85065/d76h4mfz

codeSpace

Dataset language

eng

Spatial reference system

code identifying the spatial reference system

Classification of spatial data and services

Topic category

geoscientificInformation

Keywords

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Text

originating controlled vocabulary

title

Resource Type

reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2016-01-01T00:00:00Z

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East bounding longitude

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Temporal reference

Temporal extent

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Dataset reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2019-01-22T00:00:00Z

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Conformity

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Limitations on public access

None

Responsible organisations

Responsible party

contact position

OpenSky Support

organisation name

UCAR/NCAR - Library

full postal address

PO Box 3000

Boulder

80307-3000

email address

opensky@ucar.edu

web address

http://opensky.ucar.edu/

name: homepage

responsible party role

pointOfContact

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