Post-CME Reconnection and the Generation of Descending Coronal Voids

M. Linton

NRL

I will present simulations of localized 3D reconnection in a post-CME current sheet. Such reconnection creates flux ropes which retract down to the low corona. I will argue that these retracting flux ropes appear as the descending dark voids observed by Yohkoh, SOHO, and TRACE in the wake of CME eruptions. When these flux ropes collide with the post-flare arcade of loops in the low corona, they decelerate rapidly, as the observed voids do, and then they settle into the arcade, contributing to the filamented arcade structure often seen by TRACE. I will also show how multiple bursts of such reconnection can be spontaneously generated in the simulations, likely due to a form of the tearing mode instability, leading to a cascade of such downflows.