PARTIAL TORUS INSTABILITY

Flux ropes are now generally accepted to be the magnetic configuration of coronal mass ejections (CMEs), which may be formed prior to or during solar eruptions. In this study, we model the flux rope as a current-carrying partial torus loop with its two footpoints anchored in the photosphere, and investigate its stability in the context of the torus instability (TI). Previous studies on TI have focused on the configuration of a circular torus and revealed the existence of a critical decay index of the overlying constraining magnetic field. Our study reveals that the critical index is a function of the fractional number of the partial torus, defined by the ratio between the arc length of the partial torus above the photosphere and the circumference of a circular torus of equal radius. We refer to this finding as the partial torus instability (PTI). It is found that a partial torus with a smaller fractional number has a smaller critical index, thus requiring a more gradually decreasing magnetic field to stabilize the flux rope. On the other hand, a partial torus with a larger fractional number has a larger critical index. In the limit of a circular torus when the fractional number approaches 1, the critical index goes to a maximum value. We demonstrate that the PTI helps us to understand the confinement, growth, and eventual eruption of a flux-rope CME.