On the Onset Mechanism for Solar Coronal Jets, and Implications for the Onset Mechanism for CME-Producing Eruptions

TL;DR

This paper explores the onset mechanisms of solar coronal jets and discusses their implications for understanding how large-scale eruptions like CMEs are triggered, highlighting the potential of jets as simpler models for eruption processes.

Contribution

It proposes that studying coronal jets, as small-scale eruptions, can reveal fundamental insights into the onset mechanisms of larger CME-producing solar eruptions.

Findings

Coronal jets are frequent, transient, small-scale eruptions often driven by minifilament eruptions.

Jets can serve as simplified models to understand the magnetic processes leading to large eruptions.

Studying jets helps identify key factors in eruption onset that are less apparent in complex large-scale events.

Abstract

Large-scale solar eruptions often include ejection of a filament, a solar flare, and expulsion of a coronal mass ejection (CME). Unravelling the magnetic processes that build up the free energy for these eruptions and trigger that energy's release in the eruption is a continuing challenge in solar physics. Such large-scale eruptions are comparatively infrequent, with the moderate level ones (say, GOES M-class events) occurring perhaps once every few days on average during active-activity times, and much less frequently during quieter times. In contrast, solar coronal jets, which are long (~50,000 km), narrow (less than about 10,000 km), transient (~10--20 min) plasma spires with bright bases and that are seen in soft X-rays and EUV, occur much more frequently, likely several hundred times per day independent of large-scale solar activity level. Recent studies indicate that coronal jets are small-scale versions of large-scale eruptions, often produced by eruption of a small-scale "miniflament," that results in a "miniflare" analogous to a larger typical solar flare, and that sometimes produces a CME analogue (a "narrow CME" or "white-light jet"). Under the assumption that jets are small-scale eruptions, their higher occurrence frequency and faster build-up evolution reveals perhaps fundamental aspects of all eruptions that are not as easy to discern in the more-complex magnetic environment and the slower build up to the larger eruptions. Therefore, the study of coronal jets can provide insights into the onset mechanism of CME-producing large-scale eruptions.