THE ROLE OF A FLUX ROPE EJECTION IN A THREE-DIMENSIONAL MAGNETOHYDRODYNAMIC SIMULATION OF A SOLAR FLARE

Abstract

We investigated the dynamic evolution of a three-dimensional (3D) flux rope eruption and magnetic reconnection process in a solar flare by simply extending the two-dimensional (2D) resistive magnetohydrodynamic simulation model of solar flares with low β plasma to a 3D model. We succeeded in reproducing a current sheet and bi-directional reconnection outflows just below the flux rope during the eruption in our 3D simulations. We calculated four cases of a strongly twisted flux rope and a weakly twisted flux rope in 2D and 3D simulations. The time evolution of a weakly twisted flux rope in the 3D simulation shows behaviors similar to those of the 2D simulation, while a strongly twisted flux rope in the 3D simulation clearly shows a different time evolution from the 2D simulation except for the initial phase evolution. The ejection speeds of both strongly and weakly twisted flux ropes in 3D simulations are larger than in the 2D simulations, and the reconnection rates in 3D cases are also larger than in the 2D cases. This indicates positive feedback between the ejection speed of a flux rope and the reconnection rate even in the 3D simulation, and we conclude that the plasmoid-induced reconnection model can be applied to 3D. We also found that small-scale plasmoids are formed inside a current sheet and make it turbulent. These small-scale plasmoid ejections have a role in locally increasing the reconnection rate intermittently as observed in solar flares, coupled with a global eruption of a flux rope.