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High-Resolution Observation of Blowout Jets Regulated by Sunspot Rotation

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Abstract

Coronal jets are believed to be the miniature version of large-scale solar eruptions. In particular, the eruption of a minifilament inside the base arch is suggested to be the trigger and even driver of blowout jets. Here, we propose an alternative triggering mechanism, based on high-resolution H\(\alpha \) observations of a blowout jet associated with a minifilament and an M1.2-class flare. The minifilament remains largely stationary during the blowout jet, except that it is straddled by flare loops connecting two flare ribbons, indicating that the magnetic arcade embedding the minifilament has been torn into two parts, with the upper part escaping with the blowout jet. In the wake of the flare, the southern end of the minifilament fans out like neighboring fibrils, indicative of mass and field exchanges between the minifilament and the fibrils. The blowout jet is preceded by a standard jet. With H\(\alpha \) fibrils moving toward the single-strand spire in a sweeping fashion, the standard jet transitions to the blowout jet. A similar pattern of standard-to-blowout jet transition occurs in an earlier C-class flare before the minifilament forms. The spiraling morphology and sweeping direction of these fibrils are suggestive of their footpoints being dragged by the leading sunspot that undergoes clockwise rotation for over two days. Soon after the sunspot rotation reaches a peak angular speed as fast as 10 deg h−1, the dormant active region becomes flare productive, and the minifilament forms through the interaction of moving magnetic features from the rotating sunspot with satellite spots/pores. Hence, we suggest that the sunspot rotation plays a key role in building up free energy for flares and jets and in triggering blowout jets by inducing sweeping motions of fibrils.

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Data Availability

The solar data used in the study are publicly available for download from the mission archives. The SDO data are available at http://jsoc.stanford.edu/. The NVST data are available at https://fso.ynao.ac.cn/DataService/query. The STIX data are available at https://datacenter.stix.i4ds.net/. The HXI data used in this study are during the mission commissioning phase and are available upon reasonable request, and the data after April 2023 are publicly available for download at http://aso-s.pmo.ac.cn/sodc/dataArchive.jsp.

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Funding

R.L. and Y.S. acknowledge the support from the National Key R&D Program of China 2022YFF0503002. R.L., H.P., and R.B.L. acknowledge the support by NSFC (11925302, 42188101, and 42274204) and by the Strategic Priority Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (XDB41000000). Y.S. and W.G. also acknowledge the support by NSFC (12333010, 11820101002, 11921003, and 12233012) and by the Strategic Priority Research Program of the Chinese Academy of Science (Grant No. XDB0560000). A.M.V acknowledges support by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF) 10.55776/I4555.

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  1. Tingyu Gou

    Present address: Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian, 60 Garden Street, Cambridge, MA, 02138, USA

Authors and Affiliations

  1. CAS Key Laboratory of Geospace Environment, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, 230026, China

    Tingyu Gou, Rui Liu, Hanya Pan & Runbin Luo

  2. Key Laboratory of Dark Matter and Space Astronomy, Purple Mountain Observatory, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Nanjing, 210023, China

    Yang Su & Weiqun Gan

  3. Institute of Physics & Kanzelhöhe Observatory for Solar and Environmental Research, University of Graz, 8010, Graz, Austria

    Astrid M. Veronig

  4. University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Nanjing, 211135, China

    Weiqun Gan

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Contributions

T.G. and R.L. led the study, performed the analysis, and wrote the manuscript. Y.S. provided and analyzed the HXI data and contributed to the discussion. A.M.V. contributed to the interpretation and discussion. H.P. contributed to the STIX data analysis. R.B.L contributed to the NVST observation and data. W.G. is the PI of ASO-S mission and contributed to the discussion. All authors reviewed the manuscript.

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Gou, T., Liu, R., Su, Y. et al. High-Resolution Observation of Blowout Jets Regulated by Sunspot Rotation. Sol Phys 299, 99 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11207-024-02333-8

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