The Trigger Mechanism of Recurrent Solar Active Region Jets Revealed by the Magnetic Properties of a Coronal Geyser Site

Abstract

Abstract Solar active region jets are small-scale collimated plasma eruptions that are triggered from magnetic sites embedded in sunspot penumbral regions. Multiple trigger mechanisms for recurrent jets are under debate. Vector magnetic field data from Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) Helioseismic and Magnetic Imager (HMI) observations are used to analyze a prolific photospheric configuration, identified in extreme ultraviolet observations as a “coronal geyser,” that triggered a set of at least 10 recurrent solar active region jets. We focus on interpreting the magnetic fields of small-scale flaring sites aiming to understand the processes that govern recurrent jet eruptions. We perform a custom reprocessing of the SDO-HMI products, including disambiguation and uncertainty estimation. We scrutinized the configuration and dynamics of the photospheric magnetic structures. The magnetic configuration is described, via the analysis of the photospheric magnetic vertical fields, to identify the process that is responsible for driving the jet eruptions. We report that the two widely debated magnetic trigger processes, namely magnetic flux cancellation and magnetic flux emergence, appear to be responsible on a case by case basis for generating each eruption in our set. We find that 4 out of 10 jets were due to flux cancellation, while the rest were clearly not and were more likely due to flux emergence.