Forming Prominences Accounting for Partial Ionization Effects

Abstract

One of the most striking structures in the solar atmosphere are prominences, predominantly coronal structures, with thermodynamic conditions that vary from chromospheric internally to the corona that surrounds them. These structures play an important role in the energy transfer between all layers of the atmosphere. Although mostly studied as a fully ionized plasma, prominences are, in fact, composed of partially ionized plasma. We do not yet fully understand the extent to which the two-fluid plasma-neutral properties play a role in the evolution of these coronal structures. In this work, we explore for the very first time how prominence formation and growth in a coronal loop evolve in a two-fluid setting. We used MPI-AMRVAC to study the evaporation–condensation process, where we consider radiative cooling, thermal conduction, and localized heating in a coronal loop in a fully stratified atmosphere. We report on the differences the two-fluid plasma brings into the prominence evolution and more specifically in the period after the dynamic formation process finishes. Furthermore, we highlight the role it plays during the linear and the nonlinear phases of the evolution. We find pronounced two-fluid effects in shocks that appear with the first complete condensation and confirm decoupling effects in the prominence–corona transition region on the order of 100 m s ^−1 , consistent with observations.

Keywords

• Magnetohydrodynamical simulations
• Solar prominences
• Plasma physics