Eruption of the magnetic flux rope in a quick decaying active region

Abstract An isolated and quickly decaying active region (NOAA 9729) was observed as it passed across the solar disk. There was only one CME associated with the active region, which provides a good opportunity to investigate the whole process of the CME. A filament in this active region was observed to rise rapidly before stalling and disintegrating into flare loops. The rising filament seen in EIT images separates into two parts just before eruption. A new filament reforms several hours later after the CME; the axis of this new filament is rotated clockwise approximately 22° compared with that of the first filament,due to a changed orientation of the polarity inversion line. We also observed a bright transient slightly S-shaped X-ray sigmoid, which appears immediately after the filament eruption. The X-ray sigmoid quickly develops into a soft X-ray cusp and rises before dropping back down. Two magnetic cancelation regions were observed clearly just before filament eruption. The eruption process of the sigmoid structure in this quick decaying active region could be explained by using the 3D Tether-Cutting model. The magnetic flux rope erupted as the magnetic helicity approached its maximum and the normalized helicity was −0.036 when the magnetic flux rope erupted, which is an order of magnitude smaller than the simulation results of the kink and torus instability, but is close to the predicted value of Zhang et al. (2008) based on the theoretical non-linear force-free model.