Coronal mass ejections and magnetic clouds modeled as MHD bounded states

Summary form only given. Multiple loops can be seen in the solar corona before the onset of a coronal mass ejection (CME), during and after the event. We apply multi-toroidal configurations to model CMEs and their interplanetary counterparts - magnetic clouds. In the laboratory, plasma confinement is often achieved by conducting metal walls which introduce elastic forces to maintain equilibrium. Such walls, carrying electric surface currents, usually are taken as boundaries where the magnetic field is truncated to provide finite energy for the configuration. The idea of MHD bounded states as solutions with continuous magnetic field and finite magnetic energy was put forward in 1975. Such solutions describe a single toroid (ground state) and multiple toroids (excited states). We analyze noncircular cross sections of such toroids and compare the components of the magnetic field vector with in situ observations in interplanetary magnetic clouds. We present Ulysses spacecraft observations in support of our multi-tube model for interplanetary magnetic clouds based on bounded state MHD configurations with axial and helical symmetry. The interaction of CMEs with the global coronal field will also be discussed. In our presentation, we stress the difference in boundary conditions for magnetic configurations in laboratory and space plasmas.