Paper detail

Transition-Region/Coronal Signatures and Magnetic Setting of Sunspot Penumbral Jets: {\it Hinode} (SOT/FG), Hi-C and {\it SDO}/AIA Observations

Penumbral microjets (PJs) are transient narrow bright features in the chromosphere of sunspot penumbrae, first characterized by Katsukawa et al (2007) using the \CaII\ H-line filter on {\it Hinode}'s Solar Optical Telescope (SOT). It was proposed that the PJs form as a result of reconnection between two magnetic components of penumbra (spines and interspines), and that they could contribute to the transition region (TR) and coronal heating above sunspot penumbrae. We propose a modified picture of formation of PJs based on recent results on internal structure of sunspot penumbral filaments. Using data of a sunspot from {\it Hinode}/SOT, High Resolution Coronal Imager, and different passbands of the Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (AIA) onboard the {\it Solar Dynamics Observatory}, we examine whether PJs have signatures in the TR and corona. We find hardly any discernible signature of normal PJs in any AIA passbands, except a few of them showing up in the 1600 Å images. However, we discovered exceptionally stronger jets with similar lifetimes but bigger sizes (up to 600 km wide) occurring repeatedly in a few locations in the penumbra, where evidence of patches of opposite polarity fields at the tails of some penumbral filaments is seen in Stokes-V images. These large tail PJs do display signatures in the TR. Whether they have any coronal-temperature plasma is ambiguous. We infer that none of the PJs, including the large tail PJs, directly heat the corona in ARs significantly, but any penumbral jet might drive some coronal heating indirectly via generation of Alfvén waves and/or braiding of the coronal field.