Dynamics of Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs)

Strong geomagnetic storms cause disturbances in the ionosphere that can modify conditions in the operational environment of the Navy around the globe. If severe enough, they can degrade or cause outages in SATCOM and GPS operations, impairing the Navys ability to maintain environmental awareness and continuous connectivity of the widely dispersed fleet. The ultimate cause of strong storms is the eruption of Earth-directed coronal mass ejections CMEs at the Sun. CMEs, which are strongly magnetized plasma structures, represent ejection of 1016 g of material at up to 2000 kms from the Sun. The magnetic geometry and the driving mechanism of CMEs have been two major questions of modern solar physics. These questions are closely related the driving forces acting on a magnetized plasma structure critically depend on its magnetic geometry in three dimensions. Unfortunately, neither the magnetic field of the eruptive structure nor the forces acting on it can be directly measured. Under an NRL basic research program supplemented by NASA grants, we have developed a first-principles theory to understand the 3D magnetic geometry and the nature of the force from directly observable quantities.