Vol 14, No 5

Dependence of the length of solar filament threads on the magnetic configuration

Yu-Hao Zhou, Peng-Fei Chen, Qing-Min Zhang, Cheng Fang

Abstract

Abstract High-resolution Hα observations indicate that filaments consist of an assembly of thin threads. In quiescent filaments, the threads are generally short, whereas in active region filaments, the threads are generally long. In order to explain these observational features, we performed one-dimensional radiative hydrodynamic simulations of filament formation along a dipped magnetic flux tube in the framework of the chromospheric evaporation-coronal condensation model. The geometry of a dipped magnetic flux tube is characterized by three parameters, i.e., the depth (D), the half-width (w) and the altitude (h) of the magnetic dip. A survey of the parameters in numerical simulations shows that when allowing the filament thread to grow in 5 days, the maximum length (Lth) of the filament thread increases linearly with w, and decreases linearly with D and h. The dependence is fitted into a linear function Lth = 0.84w−0.88D−2.78h+17.31 (Mm). Such a relation can qualitatively explain why quiescent filaments have shorter threads and active region filaments have longer threads.

Keywords

Keywords Sun: filaments, prominences — methods: numerical — hydrodynamics

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