Exploring the Origin of Stealth Coronal Mass Ejections with Magnetofrictional Simulations

Abstract

Coronal mass ejections (CMEs) – among the most energetic events originating from the Sun – can cause significant and sudden disruption to the magnetic and particulate environment of the heliosphere. Thus, in the current era of space-based technologies, early warning that a CME has left the Sun is crucial. Some CMEs exhibit signatures at the solar surface and in the lower corona as the eruption occurs, thus enabling their prediction before arriving at near-Earth satellites. However, a significant fraction of CMEs exhibit no such detectable signatures and are known as “stealth CMEs”. Theoretical and observational studies aiming to understand the physical mechanism behind stealth CMEs have identified coronal streamers as potential sources. In this paper, we show that such streamer-blowout eruptions – which do not involve the lift-off of a low-coronal magnetic flux rope – are naturally produced even in the quasi-static magnetofrictional model for the coronal magnetic field. Firstly, we show that magnetofriction can reproduce, in this way, a particular stealth CME event observed during 1- 2 June 2008. Secondly, we show that the magnetofrictional model predicts the occurrence of repeated eruptions without clear low-coronal signatures from such arcades, provided that the high, overlying magnetic field lines are sufficiently sheared by differential rotation. A two-dimensional parameter study shows that such eruptions are robust under variation of the parameters, and that the eruption frequency is primarily determined by the footpoint shearing. This suggests that magnetofrictional models could, in principle, provide early indication – even pre-onset – of stealth eruptions, whether or not they originate from eruption of a low-coronal flux rope.