Fredagskollokvium: The Mass and Magnetic Field of Eruptive Solar Filaments

Erupting flux ropes are not only beautiful, captivating solar phenomena, but also a major source of extreme space-weather events. The more we understand how and why these events occur, the better chance we have at predicting and preparing for such events. In this work I attempt to determine the density and total filament mass involved with flux ropes, before and after erupting, especially focussing on eruptions which failed to carry away at least some of the mass contained within, resulting in filament mass being seen to fall back from the erupting structure. This may explain why it is so rare to find cool filament plasma in ICMEs/magnetic clouds. The method employed is a quasi-spectroscopic technique, which utilises co-temporal multiple passband SDO/AIA EUV images to determine column density. I then go on to examine the dynamics of the material and  investigate the effect of magnetic field strength, density and mass configuration on the possibilities of structural formation (specifically the Rayleigh-Taylor instability). MHD simulations of the instabilities which are observed in particular eruptions are run and the evolution of these simulations (growth rates and length scales, specifically) are compared with the observations.