Coronal Jets, and the Jet-CME Connection

TL;DR

This paper reviews recent advances in understanding solar coronal jets, highlighting their magnetic drivers, the role of erupting minifilaments, and their connection to narrow and wider CMEs.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive summary of new evidence on the magnetic mechanisms behind coronal jets and their links to CMEs, updating previous models.

Findings

Erupting minifilaments often drive jets via magnetic reconnection.

Magnetic flux cancelation at the minifilament base triggers eruptions.

Some jets produce narrow CME-like features and weak streamer-puff CMEs.

Abstract

Solar coronal jets have been observed in detail since the early 1990s. While it is clear that these jets are magnetically driven, the details of the driving process has recently been updated. Previously it was suspected that the jets were a consequence of magnetic flux emergence interacting with ambient coronal field. New evidence however indicates that often the direct driver of the jets is erupting field, often carrying cool material (a "minifilament"), that undergoes interchange magnetic reconnection with preexisting field ([1]). More recent work indicates that the trigger for eruption of the minifilament is frequently cancelation of photospheric magnetic fields at the base of the minifilament. These erupting minifilaments are analogous to the better-known larger-scale filament eruptions that produce solar flares and, frequently, coronal mass ejections (CMEs). A subset of coronal jets drive narrow "white-light jets," which are very narrow CME-like features, and apparently a few jets can drive wider, although relatively weak, "streamer-puff" CMEs. Here we summarize these recent findings.