Dana Warfield Longcope

3D Patchy Reconnection in Solar Coronal Mass Ejections

Summary form only given. Coronal mass ejections (CMEs), sudden eruptions of coronal plasma and magnetic field into the interplanetary medium, are one of the most dynamic phenomena in the solar corona. These CMEs are an important driver of space weather both through their interaction with the Earths magnetosphere and through the magnetic reconnection and flaring which is driven in the solar corona in their wake. We will present simulations of the eruption of these CMEs, and the formation of coronal current sheets behind them. We will focus on the dynamics of reconnection in these post-CME current sheets, in particular studying the effect of multiple patches of localized reconnection. We impose this reconnection in an MHD simulation by enhancing the resistivity in small regions for a short time, thus allowing a finite amount of flux to reconnect. This forms a pair of 3D reconnected flux tubes piercing the current sheet. These tubes then retract from the reconnection region, pushing their way through the surrounding magnetic field. We will discuss how this model relates to in situ WIND observations of the reconnection structure of CMEs, to the efficiency of heating in solar flares, and to the generation of descending post-eruption voids seen in the high corona by TRACE and LASCO