CME Initiation

One of the most challenging problems in solar physics is understanding the processes responsible for giant magnetic disruptions such as the event of July 14, 2000, which consisted of a massive filament ejection, a fast coronal mass ejection (CME), prolonged X-class flaring, and an intense particle storm. These major events are of critical importance because they drive the most destructive forms of space weather and they provide a unique opportunity to study, in revealing detail, MHD instability and nonequilibrium -- processes that are at the heart of plasma astrophysics. It is now widely accepted that CMEs/eruptive flares represent the explosive release of magnetic energy stored in the corona. Therefore, in order to understand the phenomenon, we must answer the following questions: What is the field structure responsible for the disruption and why is the energy released explosively? In this talk we address these two questions using the latest theories and numerical models for CMEs/eruptive flares.