In a recent study published in The Astrophysical Journal, a research group led by Dr. HONG Junchao from Yunnan Observatories of Chinese Academy of Sciences reported a new perspective on the triggering mechanism of solar jet.

Solar jets are transient, collimated plasma ejections that escape away from the low solar atmosphere. HONG et.al found a reversal of breakout reconnection preceding a jet. Further, they propose that this observation also provides credible evidence for the so-called oscillatory reconnection.

In detail, a current sheet is directly detected near the jet base. Triggered by the magnetic reconnection at this current sheet, two minifilaments under the sheet erupted into a jet. So, this observation suggests the breakout mechanism for solar jet. Besides, before the onset of the jet, the sheet first shortens to zero in length along the horizontal direction, but then lengthens toward the vertical direction. This transition of the sheet indicates that the jet is triggered by oscillatory breakout reconnection.

The study shed new light on the triggering mechanism for solar jets.

This work is supported by the Natural Science Foundation of China, Project of the Group for Innovation of Yunnan Province, and the Open Research Program of the Key Laboratory of Solar Activity of Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Contact:

HONG Junchao, Yunnan Observatories, CAS

hjcsolar@ynao.ac.cn