The essential role of magnetic reconnection in erupting prominences and CMEs Original Research Article

Reconnection has been invoked by various researchers in the different steps of filament formation, evolution, and eruption, but is has been hard to obtain conclusive observational evidence. The association of magnetic clouds with the CMEs over erupting filaments has been suggested as being the result of reconnection behind the CMEs as they leave the Sun. In previous work we have shown that magnetic cloud topology can be predicted from the pre-eruption filament and post-eruption coronal arcade structure if reconnection is assumed to be involved in the eruption process. In this paper we outline the stages in the eruption process, indicating how reconnection can play a role. The case of the eruption on September 27, 1997, in which the topological properties of a magnetic cloud were successfully predicted from the solar observations, illustrates the fact that reconnection plays an important part in the life of prominences and CMEs, as well as in flares.