Magnetic Untwisting in Solar Jets that Go into the Outer Corona in Polar Coronal Holes

TL;DR

This study analyzes 14 large solar jets in polar coronal holes, revealing their high-reaching nature, significant spin, and swaying motions, suggesting magnetic-untwisting waves as the driving mechanism and potential implications for coronal heating.

Contribution

It provides detailed observations of high-reaching jets and proposes magnetic-untwisting waves as their driving mechanism, linking jet dynamics to coronal heating processes.

Findings

Jets reach beyond 2.2 RSun in the outer corona.

Jets exhibit large spin and oscillatory swaying.

Magnetic-untwisting waves lose energy below 2.2 RSun.

Abstract

We study 14 large solar jets observed in polar coronal holes. In EUV movies from SDO/AIA, each jet appears similar to most X-ray jets and EUV jets that erupt in coronal holes, but each is exceptional in that it goes higher than most, so high that it is observed in the outer corona beyond 2.2 RSun in images from the SOHO/LASCO/C2 coronagraph. From AIA He II 304 {\AA} movies and LASCO/C2 running-difference images of these high-reaching jets, we find: (1) the front of the jet transits the corona below 2.2 RSun at a speed typically several times the sound speed; (2) each jet displays an exceptionally large amount of spin as it erupts; (3) in the outer corona, most of the jets display measureable swaying and bending of a few degrees in amplitude; in three jets the swaying is discernibly oscillatory with a period of order 1 hour. These characteristics suggest that the driver in these jets is a magnetic-untwisting wave that is basically a large-amplitude (i.e., non-linear) torsional Alfven wave that is put into the reconnected open field in the jet by interchange reconnection as the jet erupts. From the measured spinning and swaying we estimate that the magnetic-untwisting wave loses most of its energy in the inner corona below 2.2 RSun. We point out that the torsional waves observed in Type-II spicules might dissipate in the corona in the same way as the magnetic-untwisting waves in our big jets and thereby power much of the coronal heating in coronal holes.