Magnetic reconnection in the solar lower atmosphere

Abstract

ABSTRACT There are many active phenomena, such as Ellerman bombs (EBs), Type II white-light flares (WLFs) etc, appear in the solar lower atmosphere. They have many common features despite of the large energy gap between them. They are considered to result from the local heating in the solar lower atmosphere. This paper presents the numerical simulations of magnetic reconnection occurring in such a deep atmosphere, with the aim to account for the common features of some of these active phenomena, especially EBs and Type II WLFs. Numerical results manifest the following two typical characteristics of the assumed reconnection process: (1) magnetic reconnection saturates in ~600–900 s, which is just the lifetime of the phenomena; (2) ionization in the upper chromosphere consumes quite a large part of the energy released through reconnection, leading to weak heating; On the contrary, in the lower chromosphere, the ionization and radiation have weak effect, resulting a strong heating in the lower chromosphere. The application of the reconnection model to the phenomena is discussed in detail.