Resistive emergence of undulatory flux tubes

During its 2000 January flight, the Flare Genesis Experiment observed the gradual emergence of a bipolar active region, by recording a series of high-resolution photospheric vector magnetograms and images in the blue wing of the Halpha line. Previous analyses of these data revealed the occurrence of many small-scale, transient Halpha brightenings identified as Ellerman bombs (EBs). They occur during the flux emergence, and many of them are located near moving magnetic dipoles in which the vector magnetic field is nearly tangential to the photosphere. A linear force-free field extrapolation of one of the magnetograms was performed to study the magnetic topology of small-scale EBs and their possible role in the flux emergence process. We found that 23 out of 47 EBs are cospatial with bald patches (BPs), while 15 are located at the footpoints of very flat separatrix field lines passing through distant BPs. We conclude that EBs can be due to magnetic reconnection, not only at BP locations, but also along their separatrices, occurring in the low chromosphere. The topological analysis reveals, for the first time, that many EBs and BPs are linked by a hierarchy of elongated flux tubes showing aperiodic spatial undulations, whose wavelengths are typically above the threshold of the Parker instability. These findings suggest that arch filament systems and coronal loops do not result from the smooth emergence of large-scale Omega-loops from below the photosphere, but rather from the rise of undulatory flux tubes whose upper parts emerge because of the Parker instability and whose dipped lower parts emerge because of magnetic reconnection. EBs are then the signature of this resistive emergence of undulatory flux tubes.