Active Region Outflow Plasma: Its Relation to Small Activity and the Solar Wind

MANDRINI, CRISTINA. H; NUEVO, FEDERICO A.; VÁSQUEZ, ALBERTO M.; DÉMOULIN, PASCAL; VAN DRIEL-GESZTELY, LYDIA; BAKER, DEBORAH; CULHANE, J.L.; CRISTIANI, GERMAN D.; PICK, M.

Moscú

Congreso; 40th COSPAR Scientific Assembly; 2014

COSPAR

Recent studies show that active region (AR) upflowing plasma, observed by the Hinode EUV Imaging Spectrometer (EIS), can gain access to open field lines and be released into the solar wind via magnetic interchange reconnection occurring below the source surface at magnetic null-points in pseudo-streamer configurations. When only one simple bipolar AR is present on the Sun and it is fully covered by the separatrix of a streamer, like AR 10978 on December 2007, it seems unlikely that the upflowing AR plasma could find its way into the slow solar wind. However, signatures of plasma with AR composition at 1 AU that appears to originate from the West of AR 10978 were recently found by Culhane and coworkers. We present a detailed topology analysis of AR 10978 based on a linear force-free magnetic field model at the AR scale, combined with a global PFSS model. This allows us, on one hand, to explain the variations observed in the upflows to the West of the AR as the result of magnetic reconnection at quasi-separatrix layers (QSLs). While at a global scale, we show that reconnection, occurring in at least two main steps, first at QSLs and later at a high-altitude coronal null-point, allows the AR plasma to get around the topological obstacle of the streamer separatrix and be released into the solar wind.