Intrusion of a Magnetic Field through the Overlying Field in the Solar Atmosphere Induced by Ballooning Instability

It has been a puzzle in solar physics how a low-lying magnetic structure such as a solar prominence surrounded by a strongly line-tied overlying field sometimes intrudes through the latter and goes into eruption. A numerical simulation study of the solar coronal plasma reveals that a ballooning instability can explain this type of eruptive process. We consider an idealized situation with two flux ropes merging. When magnetic field lines from different flux ropes reconnect, a new field line connecting farther footpoints is generated. Since the field line length abruptly increases, the field line expands outward. If the plasma beta is low, this expansion takes place more or less evenly over the whole field line. If, on the other hand, the plasma beta is high enough somewhere in this field line, the outward expansion is not even, but is localized as in a bulging balloon. This ballooning section of the magnetic field penetrates out of the overlying field, and eventually the originally underlying field and the overlying field come to interchange their apex positions. This process may explain how a field structure that has stably been confined by an overlying field can occasionally show a localized eruptive behavior.