6–10 Sept 2021
Online
Europe/Rome timezone

Nanojets of Coronal Heating

9 Sept 2021, 11:26
13m
Online

Online

Poster Session 2 - The Solar Atmosphere: Heating, Dynamics and Coupling Poster Session 10.2

Speaker

Patrick Antolin (Northumbria University)

Description

The solar corona is shaped and mysteriously heated to millions of degrees by the Sun’s magnetic field. It has long been hypothesized that the heating results from a myriad of tiny magnetic energy outbursts called nanoflares, driven by the fundamental process of magnetic reconnection. Misaligned magnetic field lines can break and reconnect, producing nanoflares in avalanche-like processes. However, no direct and unique observations of such nanoflares exist to date, and the lack of a smoking gun has cast doubt on the possibility of solving the coronal heating problem. From coordinated multi-band high-resolution observations, we report on the discovery of very fast and bursty nanojets, the telltale signature of reconnection-based nanoflares resulting in coronal heating. The nanojet is uniquely characterised by being transverse to the loop and appears as a unidirectional jet from the reconnection point. Isolated and clustered nanojets are detected, and a myriad are observed in an avalanche-like progression, leading to the formation of a coronal loop. Using state-of-the-art numerical simulations, we demonstrate that the nanojet is a consequence of the slingshot effect from the magnetically tensed, curved magnetic field lines reconnecting at small angles. Nanojets are therefore the key signature of reconnection-based coronal heating in action.

Primary authors

Patrick Antolin (Northumbria University) Dr Paolo Pagano (University of Palermo, Italy) Dr Paola Testa (Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics) Dr Antonino Petralia (INAF Osservatorio Astronomico di Palermo) Fabio Reale (Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica (INAF))

Presentation materials