STRUCTURES OF INTERPLANETARY MAGNETIC FLUX ROPES AND COMPARISON WITH THEIR SOLAR SOURCES

Whether a magnetic flux rope is pre-existing or formed in situ in the Sun's atmosphere, there is little doubt that magnetic reconnection is essential to release the flux rope during its ejection. During this process, the question remains: how does magnetic reconnection change the flux-rope structure? In this work, we continue with the original study of Qiu et al. by using a larger sample of flare–coronal mass ejection (CME)–interplanetary CME (ICME) events to compare properties of ICME/magnetic cloud (MC) flux ropes measured at 1 AU and properties of associated solar progenitors including flares, filaments, and CMEs. In particular, the magnetic field-line twist distribution within interplanetary magnetic flux ropes is systematically derived and examined. Our analysis shows that, similar to what was found before, for most of these events, the amount of twisted flux per AU in MCs is comparable with the total reconnection flux on the Sun, and the sign of the MC helicity is consistent with the sign of the helicity of the solar source region judged from the geometry of post-flare loops. Remarkably, we find that about half of the 18 magnetic flux ropes, most of them associated with erupting filaments, have a nearly uniform and relatively low twist distribution from the axis to the edge, and the majority of the other flux ropes exhibit very high twist near the axis, up to ≳ 5 turns per AU, which decreases toward the edge. The flux ropes are therefore not linearly force-free. We also conduct detailed case studies showing the contrast of two events with distinct twist distribution in MCs as well as different flare and dimming characteristics in solar source regions, and discuss how reconnection geometry reflected in flare morphology may be related to the structure of the flux rope formed on the Sun.