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Results for “coronal mass ejections (CMEs)”

Search indexed NASA NTRS and DOE OSTI research on propulsion, heat transfer, battery materials and energy systems. Follow report and document links to the original sources.

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11 records
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2024

Creating and studying a scaled interplanetary coronal mass ejection

The Sun, being an active star, undergoes eruptions of magnetized plasma that reach the Earth and cause the aurorae near the poles. These eruptions, called coronal mass ejections (CMEs), send plasma and magnetic fields out into space. CMEs that reach planetary orbits are called interplanetary coronal mass ejections (ICMEs) and are a source of geomagnetic storms, which can cause major damage to our modern electrical systems with limited warning. To study ICME propagation, we devised a scaled experiment using the Big Red Ball (BRB) plasma containment device at the Wisconsin Plasma Physics Laboratory. These experiments inject a compact torus of plasma as an ICME through an ambient plasma inside the BRB, which acts as the interplanetary medium. Magnetic and temperature probes provide three-dimensional magnetic field information in time and space, as well as temperature and density as a function of time. Using this information, we can identify features in the compact torus that are consistent with those in real ICMEs. We also identify the shock, sheath, and ejecta similar to the structure of an ICME event. This experiment acts as a first step to providing information that can inform predictive models, which can give us time to shield our satellites and large electrical systems in the event that a powerful ICME were to strike.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗
DOE OSTI2025

Magnetohydrodynamic simulations preliminarily predict the habitability and radio emission of TRAPPIST-1e

TRAPPIST-1e, an Earth-sized exoplanet in the habitable zone of the nearby M dwarf TRAPPIST-1, may experience magnetospheric responses that vary with stellar space weather, which could potentially influence both its habitability and radio emissions. Our objective is to investigate how different Earth-like magnetospheric configurations of TRAPPIST-1e – specifically variations in dipolar magnetic field strength and axial tilt – respond to diverse stellar space weather conditions, including events analogous to coronal mass ejections (CMEs), and to assess their implications for potential habitability and expected radio emissions. We conducted 3D magnetohydrodynamic simulations of the TRAPPIST-1e system using the PLUTO code in spherical coordinates. The planetary magnetic field was modelled as dipolar, with equatorial strengths from Earth-like to several times stronger. The dipole axis spans a representative range of axial tilts. We investigate four stellar wind environments, from sub-Alfvénic flow to CME-like disturbances. Planetary shielding was quantified based on the magnetopause standoff distance, and radio powers were estimated via empirical scaling laws. Our simulations show that both shielding and radio power depend strongly on the magnetic configuration. Stronger fields increase protection, while larger tilts reduce it. Radio power increases with both field strength and tilt across all wind regimes. An Earth-like magnetic field can provide effective shielding even under intense CMEs, whereas high tilts require stronger fields. Predicted radio powers reach ~10 20 erg s −1 during CMEs, making bursts from close-in, magnetised planets more detectable. However, for TRAPPIST-1e, the maximum cyclotron frequency lies below the Earth’s ionospheric cutoff (~10 MHz), making ground-based detection currently infeasible.

Sun: magnetic fields↗
DOE OSTI2023

Laboratory study of the failed torus mechanism in arched, line-tied, magnetic flux ropes

Coronal mass ejections (CMEs) are some of the most energetic and violent events in our solar system. The prediction and understanding of CMEs are of particular importance due to the impact that they can have on Earth-based satellite systems and, in extreme cases, ground-based electronics. CMEs often occur when long-lived magnetic flux ropes (MFRs) anchored to the solar surface destabilize and erupt away from the Sun. One potential cause for these eruptions is an ideal magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) instability, such as the kink or torus instability. Previous experiments on the magnetic reconnection experiment revealed a class of MFRs that were torus-unstable but kink-stable, which failed to erupt. These “failed-tori” went through a process similar to Taylor relaxation, where the toroidal current was redistributed before the eruption ultimately failed. Herein we have investigated this behavior through additional diagnostics that measure the current distribution at the foot points and the energy distribution before and after an event. These measurements indicate that ideal MHD effects are sufficient to explain the energy distribution changes during failed torus events. This excludes Taylor relaxation as a possible mechanism of current redistribution during an event. A new model that only requires non-ideal effects in a thin layer above the electrodes is presented to explain the observed phenomena. This work broadens our understanding of the stability of MFRs and the mechanism behind the failed torus through the improved prediction of the torus instability and through new diagnostics to measure the energy inventory and current profile at the foot points.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗
DOE OSTI2023

Eruption and Self-Organization of Free-Surface, Arched, and Line-Tied Magnetic Flux Ropes (Final Technical Report)

Coronal mass ejections (CMEs) are some of the most energetic and violent events in our solar system. This investigation uses laboratory experiments to study the onset threshold and nonlinear consequences of ideal MHD instabilities of magnetic flux ropes where are regarded to be related CMEs, and has obtained qualitative and quantitative understanding the dynamics of magnetic flux ropes.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗
DOE OSTI2021

Laboratory Study of the Torus Instability Threshold in Solar-relevant, Line-tied Magnetic Flux Ropes

Coronal mass ejections (CMEs) occur when long-lived magnetic flux ropes (MFRs) anchored to the solar surface destabilize and erupt away from the Sun. This destabilization is often described in terms of an ideal magnetohydrodynamic instability called the torus instability. It occurs when the external magnetic field decreases sufficiently fast such that its decay index, ${n}_{}=-z\,\partial (\mathrm{ln}{B}_{})/\partial z$, is larger than a critical value, $n\gt {n}_{\mathrm{cr}}^{}$, where ${n}_{\mathrm{cr}}^{}=1.5$ for a full, large aspect ratio torus. However, when this is applied to solar MFRs, a range of conflicting values for ${n}_{\mathrm{cr}}^{}$ is found in the literature. To investigate this discrepancy, we have conducted laboratory experiments on arched, line-tied flux ropes and applied a theoretical model of the torus instability. Our model describes an MFR as a partial torus with foot points anchored in a conducting surface and numerically calculates various magnetic forces on it. This calculation yields better predictions of ${n}_{\mathrm{cr}}^{}$ that take into account the specific parameters of the MFR. Here, we describe a systematic methodology to properly translate laboratory results to their solar counterparts, provided that the MFRs have a sufficiently small edge safety factor or, equivalently, a large enough twist. After this translation, our model predicts that ${n}_{\mathrm{cr}}^{}$ in solar conditions falls near ${n}_{\mathrm{cr}}^{\mathrm{solar}}\sim 0.9$ and within a larger range of ${n}_{\mathrm{cr}}^{\mathrm{solar}}\sim (0.7,1.2)$, depending on the parameters. The methodology of translating laboratory MFRs to their solar counterparts enables quantitative investigations of CME initiation through laboratory experiments. These experiments allow for new physics insights that are required for better predictions of space weather events but are difficult to obtain otherwise.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2025

The 2024 July 16 solar event: a challenge to the coronal mass ejection origin of long-duration gamma-ray flares

We present a multi-spacecraft analysis of the 2024 July 16 long-duration gamma-ray flare (LDGRF) detected by the Large Area Telescope on the Fermi satellite. The measured > 100 MeV γ-ray emission persisted for over seven hours after the flare impulsive phase, and was characterized by photon energies exceeding 1 GeV and a remarkably hard parent-proton spectrum. In contrast, the phenomena related to the coronal mass ejection (CME)-driven shock linked to this eruption were modest, suggesting an inefficient proton acceleration unlikely to achieve energies well above the 300 MeV pion-production threshold to account for the observed γ-ray emission. Specifically, the CME was relatively slow (∼600 km/s) and the accompanying interplanetary type-II/III radio bursts were faint and short-lived, unlike those typically detected during large events. In particular, the type-II emission did not extend to kilohertz frequencies and disappeared ∼5.5 hours prior to the LDGRF end time. Furthermore, the associated solar energetic particle (SEP) event was very weak, short-duration, and limited to a few tens of MeV, even at magnetically well-connected spacecraft. These findings demonstrate that a very fast CME resulting in a high-energy SEP event is not a necessary condition for the occurrence of LDGRFs, challenging the idea that the high-energy γ-ray emission is produced by the back-precipitation of shock-accelerated ions into the solar surface. The alternative origin scenario based on local particle trapping and acceleration in large-scale coronal loops is instead favored by the observation of giant arch-like structures of hot plasma over the source region that persisted for the entire duration of this LDGRF.

Sun: UV radiation↗
DOE OSTI2023

A Data-driven, Physics-based Transport Model of Solar Energetic Particles Accelerated by Coronal Mass Ejection Shocks Propagating through the Solar Coronal and Heliospheric Magnetic Fields

Abstract In an effort to develop computational tools for predicting radiation hazards from solar energetic particles (SEPs), we have created a data-driven physics-based particle transport model to calculate the injection, acceleration, and propagation of SEPs from coronal mass ejection (CME) shocks traversing through the solar corona and interplanetary magnetic fields. The model runs on an input of corona and heliospheric plasma and magnetic field configuration from a magnetohydrodynamic model driven by solar photospheric magnetic field measurements superposed with observed CME shocks determined from coronagraph images. SEP source particles are injected at the shock using the result of diffusive shock acceleration formulation from a characteristic obliquity-dependent injection from a heated solar wind thermal tail population. With several advanced computation techniques involving stochastic simulation and integration, the model obtains the particle intensity at any location in interplanetary space through the rigorous solution to the time-dependent 5D focus transport equation in the phase space that includes perpendicular diffusion. We apply the model to the 2011 November 3 CME event. The calculation results reproduce multispacecraft SEP observations at Earth and STEREO-B reasonably well without normalization of particle flux. The observations at STEREO-A can be reproduced by rescaling particle energy or modified energy dependence of particle diffusion coefficients. This circumsolar SEP event seen by spacecraft at Earth, STEREO-A, and STEREO-B at widely separated longitudes can be explained by diffusive shock acceleration by a single CME shock with a moderate speed.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2022

Predicting Solar Energetic Particles Using SDO/HMI Vector Magnetic Data Products and a Bidirectional LSTM Network

Solar energetic particles (SEPs) are an essential source of space radiation, and are hazardous for humans in space, spacecraft, and technology in general. In this paper, we propose a deep-learning method, specifically a bidirectional long short-term memory (biLSTM) network, to predict if an active region (AR) would produce an SEP event given that (i) the AR will produce an M- or X-class flare and a coronal mass ejection (CME) associated with the flare, or (ii) the AR will produce an M- or X-class flare regardless of whether or not the flare is associated with a CME. The data samples used in this study are collected from the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite's X-ray flare catalogs provided by the National Centers for Environmental Information. We select M- and X-class flares with identified ARs in the catalogs for the period between 2010 and 2021, and find the associations of flares, CMEs, and SEPs in the Space Weather Database of Notifications, Knowledge, Information during the same period. Each data sample contains physical parameters collected from the Helioseismic and Magnetic Imager on board the Solar Dynamics Observatory. Experimental results based on different performance metrics demonstrate that the proposed biLSTM network is better than related machine-learning algorithms for the two SEP prediction tasks studied here. We also discuss extensions of our approach for probabilistic forecasting and calibration with empirical evaluation

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2025

Modeling Particle Acceleration and Release from Solar Eruptions

Determining the relative contribution of solar flares versus coronal mass ejections in large solar energetic particle (SEP) events is a long-standing problem. Flare-accelerated particles may travel through complex magnetic fields in the eruption region and escape into interplanetary space, thereby contributing to large SEP events. The process by which flare accelerated particles are released into the heliosphere is poorly understood and yet is critical to advancing our understanding of SEPs. In this work, we address the release problem by solving the focused transport equation in the context of a 2.5D ARMS magnetohydrodynamic simulation of a breakout coronal mass ejection (CME)/flare event. We find that particles accelerated by flare reconnection can be released into interplanetary space through interchange reconnection between closed and open field lines. These particles can contribute directly to SEP events and may become an important seed population for further acceleration by CME-driven shocks. Additionally, we find that the energetic particle fluxes in the inner heliosphere remain elevated for an extended period, allowing them to contribute to SEP acceleration by subsequent CMEs. This study represents the first direct particle modeling of how flare-accelerated particles can contribute to major SEP events.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2021

Multiple Sources of Solar High-energy Protons

During the 24th solar cycle, the Fermi Large Area Telescope (LAT) has observed a total of 27 solar flares possessing delayed γ -ray emission, including the exceptionally well-observed flare and coronal mass ejection (CME) on 2017 September 10. Based on the Fermi/LAT data, we plot, for the first time, maps of possible sources of the delayed >100 MeV γ -ray emission of the 2017 September 10 event. The long-lasting γ -ray emission is localized under the CME core. The γ -ray spectrum exhibits intermittent changes in time, implying that more than one source of high-energy protons was formed during the flare–CME eruption. We find a good statistical correlation between the γ -ray fluences of the Fermi/LAT-observed delayed events and the products of corresponding CME speed and the square root of the soft X-ray flare magnitude. Data support the idea that both flares and CMEs jointly contribute to the production of subrelativistic and relativistic protons near the Sun.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗