Statistical Evidence for Small-scale Interchange Reconnection at a Coronal Hole Boundary

Abstract

Much of coronal hole (CH) research is focused upon determining the boundary and calculating the open flux as accurately as possible. However, the observed boundary itself is worthy of investigation, and holds important clues to the physics transpiring at the interface between the open and closed fields. This Letter reports a powerful new method, an application of the correlation integral which we call correlation dimension mapping, by which the irregularity of a CH boundary can be objectively quantified. This method highlights the most important spatial scales involved in boundary dynamics, and also allows for easy temporal analysis of the boundary. We apply this method to an equatorial CH bounded on two sides by helmet streamers and on the third by a small pseudostreamer, which we observed at maximum cadence for an hour on 2015 June 4. We argue that the relevant spatial scales are in the range of ∼5–20 Mm, and we find that the boundary complexity depends measurably upon the nature of the neighboring closed structure. The boundary along the pseudostreamer shows signs of highly localized, intermittent-complexity variability, likely associated with abrupt changes in the magnetic topology, which would be elegantly explained by interchange reconnection. By contrast, the helmet streamer boundary supports long-lived, high-complexity regions. These findings support the recent predictions of interchange reconnection occurring at very small scales in the corona.