HR: 0800h
AN: SH22A-0838    [Abstracts]
TI: Alfven Waves observed in Polar Jets
AU: * Cirtain, J
EM: jcirtain@cfa.harvard.edu
AF: NSSTC MSFC/NASA, Mail Stop VP62 NASA/MSFC, Huntsville, AL 35812, United States
AU: * Cirtain, J
EM: jcirtain@cfa.harvard.edu
AF: Harvard-Smithsonian CfA, 60 Garden St. MS58, Cambridge, MA 02138, United States
AB: Data collected on X-ray jets during a polar coronal hole observation campaign has revealed that some events have two distinct velocity components, one near the Alfv\rm\acute{e}n speed (~ 800 km sec^-1) and the other near the sound speed (200 km sec^-1). Previous reports indicate the incidence of jet formation to be only a few per day, with average radial speeds of 200 km sec^-1. With the X-Ray Telescope (XRT) we detect an average of 10 events per hour. These jets are approximately 2 × 10³ - 2 × 10⁴ km wide and than 1 × 10⁵ km long. The jet lifetimes range from 100 - 2500 secs. A large percentage of these jets are associated with small footpoint flares (1). The large number of events, coupled with the high velocities of the apparent outflows, indicate that these jets may contribute significantly to the high-speed solar wind from coronal holes. These observations provide unique and important evidence for the generation of Alfvén waves during reconnection and are possibly the first evidence of Alfv´n wave observations driving the high speed solar wind.
DE: 7509 Corona
DE: 7511 Coronal holes
SC: SPA-Solar and Heliospheric Physics [SH]
MN: 2007 Fall Meeting