Paper detail

Thermal instabilities: Fragmentation and field misalignment of filament fine structure

Prominences show a surprising amount of fine structure and it is widely believed that their threads, as seen in H$α$ observations, provide indirect information concerning magnetic field topology. We investigate the spontaneous emergence and evolution of fine structure in high-density condensations formed through the process of thermal instability under typical solar coronal conditions. Our study reveals intricate multidimensional processes that occur through in situ condensations in a representative coronal volume in a low plasma beta regime. We performed 2D and 3D numerical simulations of interacting slow magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) wave modes when all relevant non-adiabatic effects are included. We show that the interaction of multiple slow MHD wave modes in a regime unstable to the thermal mode leads to thermal instability. This initially forms pancake-like structures almost orthogonal to the local magnetic field, while low-pressure induced inflows of matter generate rebound shocks. This is succeeded by the rapid disruption of these pancake sheets through thin-shell instabilities evolving naturally from minute ram pressure imbalances. This eventually creates high-density blobs accompanied by thread-like features from shear flow effects. The further evolution of the blobs follows the magnetic field lines, such that a dynamical realignment with the background magnetic field appears. However, the emerging thread-like features are not at all field-aligned, implying only a very weak link between fine structure orientation and magnetic field topology which has far-reaching implications for field topology interpretations based on H$α$ observations.