Magnetic Topology of Active Regions and Coronal Holes: Implications for Coronal Outflows and the Solar Wind

Colorful, simple, and to the point: a model cartoon. This one, from a paper on coronal holes and the solar wind, illustrates component reconnection between a compact, hot, dense, and red "field line" and a cool, long, tenuous, and blue "field line." The reconnection would allow the hot (red) gas to flow outward along the left-hand branch. The only problem is the fact that the microphysics, to be interesting here, would have to involve more than one field line, since a line has zero volume and cannot contain any kind of material - it has to be a flux tube with finite spatial scale, and we remain somewhat in the dark about how this would really work. The flare connection here would probably lie in an identification of this process with "interchange reconnection"