Magnetic Reconnection Governs the Entire Lifecycle of Solar Eruptive Magnetic Flux Rope

Abstract

While magnetic flux ropes (MFRs) are widely accepted to exist prior to many solar eruptions, the physical mechanism responsible for triggering and subsequently driving their eruptions remains debated. Classical models commonly attribute eruption onset to ideal magnetohydrodynamic instabilities, particularly the torus instability, while magnetic reconnection is often regarded as a secondary process. Using high-resolution three-dimensional MHD simulations, we investigate the eruption of an MFR that forms self-consistently through flux cancellation driven by converging motions and photospheric diffusion following an initial shearing phase. The pre-eruption MFR rises quasi-statically and reaches a height where the decay index exceeds the classical torus instability threshold, yet the system continues to evolve quasi-statically without eruption. Instead, eruption begins only when the current sheet beneath the MFR becomes sufficiently thin for magnetic reconnection to set in. Increasing numerical resolution systematically delays the eruption onset, whereas the decay index at eruption onset remains nearly unchanged, demonstrating that the onset is governed by reconnection rather than torus instability. During the eruption, magnetic reconnection continuously converts surrounding sheared arcades into newly reconnected twisted flux that merges with the pre-eruption MFR and continuously to build the erupting MFR. A component-resolved analysis of the Lorentz force work further shows that the newly reconnection flux contributes predominantly to the main acceleration phase. These results demonstrate that magnetic reconnection plays a central role throughout the entire lifecycle of the eruptive MFR: it builds the MFR, directly triggers its eruption, and provides the dominant driving of the eruption.