Potential Height-dependent Magnetic Signatures Associated with the Eruptive State of Magnetically Complex Active Regions and Their Relationship to Active Longitudes

The mechanism by which some magnetically complex active regions evolve toward highly eruptive states while others remain relatively quiet remains an open question under active debate. In our previous studies, we showed that analysing magnetic parameters from the photosphere into the lower corona using potential field (PF), linear force-free field (LFFF), and nonlinear force-free field (NLFFF) extrapolations reveals important height-dependent behaviour, but these conclusions were based on five flaring and one nonflaring active regions. Here, we extend this investigation by doubling the sample to ten magnetically complex active regions and expanding the flaring range to span C- to X-class flaring activity. We derive three global diagnostic parameters and seven height-dependent morphological diagnostics, evaluated on horizontal layers every ∼360 km from the photosphere up to 7 Mm. We find that while the NLFFF-based NF2 model generally yields stronger magnetic fields and allows eruptive signatures to persist above the photosphere, PF and LFFF are able to model very similar large-scale morphological trends. This finding suggests that much of the relevant structural information may already be captured by PF and LFFF, methods considered less complex than NF2. Therefore, here, we incorporate seven additional regions from a previous work consistent with LFFF data, yielding a combined sample of 17 magnetically complex active regions. Across this expanded data set, we observe that the most eruptive active regions (9 out of 17) tend to maintain a larger number of magnetic parameters (between 7 and 9) above their pre-eruptive thresholds over broader height ranges.