Emergence of undulatory magnetic flux tubes by small scale reconnections

Abstract

With Flare Genesis Experiment (FGE), a balloon borne observatory launched in Antarctica on January 2000, series of high spatial resolution vector magnetograms, Dopplergrams, and Hα filtergrams have been obtained in an emerging active region (AR 8844). Previous analyses of this data revealed the occurence of many short-lived and small-scale H α brightenings called ‘Ellerman bombs’ (EBs) within the AR. We performed an extrapolation of the field above the photosphere using the linear force-free field approximation. The analysis of the magnetic topology reveals a close connexion between the loci of EBs and the existence of “Bald patches” (BP) regions (BPs are regions where the vector magnetic field is tangential to the photosphere). Some of these EBs/BPs are magnetically connected by low-lying field lines, presenting a serpentine shape. This results leads us to conjecture that arch filament systems and active regions coronal loops do not result from the smooth emergence of large scale Ω-loops, but rather from the rise of flat undulatory flux tubes which get released from their photospheric anchorage by reconnection at BPs, which observational signature is Ellerman bombs.