Published January 10, 2017 | Version v1
Journal article

CORONAL JETS SIMULATED WITH THE GLOBAL ALFVÉN WAVE SOLAR MODEL

  • 1. Climate and Space Sciences and Engineering Department, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109 (United States)
  • 2. Heliophysics Science Division, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD 20771 (United States)

Description

This paper describes a numerical modeling study of coronal jets to understand their effects on the global corona and their contribution to the solar wind. We implement jets into a well-established three-dimensional, two-temperature magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) solar corona model employing Alfvén-wave dissipation to produce a realistic solar-wind background. The jets are produced by positioning a compact magnetic dipole under the solar surface and rotating the boundary plasma around the dipole's magnetic axis. The moving plasma drags the magnetic field lines along with it, ultimately leading to a reconnection-driven jet similar to that described by Pariat et al. We compare line-of-sight synthetic images to multiple jet observations at EUV and X-ray bands, and find very close matches in terms of physical structure, dynamics, and emission. Key contributors to this agreement are the greatly enhanced plasma density and temperature in our jets compared to previous models. These enhancements arise from the comprehensive thermodynamic model that we use and, also, our inclusion of a dense chromosphere at the base of our jet-generating regions. We further find that the large-scale corona is affected significantly by the outwardly propagating torsional Alfvén waves generated by our polar jet, across 40° in latitude and out to 24 R . We estimate that polar jets contribute only a few percent to the steady-state solar-wind energy outflow.

Availability note (English)

Available from http://dx.doi.org/10.3847/1538-4357/834/2/123

Additional details

Identifiers

Publishing Information

Journal Title
Astrophysical Journal
Journal Volume
834
Journal Issue
2
Journal Page Range
[20 p.]
ISSN
0004-637X
CODEN
ASJOAB