What do coronal hole jets eat: A look at these beasts and the mechanisms that feed them

The solar atmosphere is composed of dynamic regions that transfer mass and energy between them. In the outer layer, the corona, coronal holes appear as dark patches in observations. Coronal hole jets are mechanisms that can guide solar plasma through the atmosphere into space. In this project we study jets formed along the boundaries of such coronal holes. Properties of these jets are still unclear, and we aimed to study the origin and evolution of these jets. The coronal hole jets appear to be rooted in the solar photosphere. Plasma motion in these regions is dictated by the open magnetic field lines along the coronal hole boundaries, often creating openings for the jets to appear at coronal temperatures. The importance of studying these jets is because such jets could be associated with mass and energy transfer from the solar surface to the corona, as well as turbulence in the solar wind affecting space weather. In this project we combined several high-resolution observations from both ground and space-based instruments such as the Swedish 1-m Solar Telescope (SST), NASA’s Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph (IRIS), and the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO). We used these instruments to study the boundary of a coronal hole in June 2014, to gather a statistical database of jet characteristics, including length, width, lifetime, and velocity. By using these observations in various wavelengths, we have been able to detect several jet events through the solar atmosphere from the photosphere to the corona. Our results show a decrease in the number of jets as they travel through the atmosphere, which shows evidence of the multi-threaded nature of these events. We also provided statistics of oscillations of these jets using Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) techniques to create power spectra. We believe these jets to be fed by material following along magnetic field line loops outside of the coronal hole.