Picoflare jets power the solar wind emerging from a coronal hole on the Sun

TL;DR

This study uses Solar Orbiter observations to identify small-scale, high-speed jets in a coronal hole, suggesting they significantly contribute to the solar wind's emergence through intermittent, energetic plasma outflows.

Contribution

It provides new evidence that picoflare jets driven by magnetic reconnection are a key mechanism for solar wind formation from coronal holes.

Findings

Jets reach ~100 km/s speed

Jets are powered by magnetic reconnection

Jets are widespread and intermittent

Abstract

Coronal holes are areas on the Sun with open magnetic field lines. They are a source region of the solar wind, but how the wind emerges from coronal holes is not known. We observed a coronal hole using the Extreme Ultraviolet Imager on the Solar Orbiter spacecraft. We identified jets on scales of a few hundred kilometers, which last 20 to 100 seconds and reach speeds of ~100 kilometers per second. The jets are powered by magnetic reconnection and have kinetic energy in the picoflare range. They are intermittent but widespread within the observed coronal hole. We suggest that such picoflare jets could produce enough high-temperature plasma to sustain the solar wind and that the wind emerges from coronal holes as a highly intermittent outflow at small scales.