A Series of Streamer-Puff CMEs Driven by Solar Homologous Jets

Abstract:

Solar coronal jets are magnetically channeled narrow eruptions often observed in the solar atmosphere, typically in EUV and X-ray emission, and occurring in various solar environments including active regions and coronal holes. Their driving mechanism is still under discussion, but facts that we know about jets include: (a) they are ejected from or near sites of compact magnetic explosions (compact ejective solar flares), (b) they sometimes carry chromospheric material high into the corona along with coronal-temperature plasma, (c) the cool-material jet velocities can reach 100 km s^-1 or more, and (d) some active-region jets produce coronal mass ejections (CMEs). Here we investigate characteristics of EUV jets that originated from active region NOAA 12192 and produced CMEs. This active region produced many non-jet major flare eruptions (X and M class) that made no CME. A multitude of jets also occurred in the region, and in contrast to the major-flare eruptions, seven of these jets resulted in CMEs. Our jet observations are from multiple SDO/AIA EUV channels, including 304, 171, 193 and 94 Å, and our CME observations are from SOHO/LASCO C2 images. Each jet-driven CME was relatively slow-moving; had angular width (30^° – 70^°) comparable to that of the streamer base; and was of the “streamer-puff” variety, whereby a preexisting streamer was transiently inflated but not removed (blown out) by the passage of the CME. Much of the chromospheric-temperature plasma of the jets producing the CMEs escaped from the Sun, whereas relatively more of the chromospheric plasma in the non-CME-producing jets fell back to the solar surface. We also found that the CME-producing jets tended to be faster in speed and longer in duration than the non-CME-producing jets. This research was supported by funding from NASA's LWS program.