A solar blowout jet caused by the eruption of a magnetic flux rope

Abstract

We investigate the three-dimensional (3D) magnetic structure of a blowout jet originated in the west edge of NOAA Active Region (AR) 11513 on 02 July 2012 by means of recently developed forced field extrapolation (FFE) model. The results show that the blowout jet was caused by the eruption of the magnetic flux rope (MFR) consisting of twisted field lines. We further calculate the twist number $\mathcal{T}_{w}$ and squashing factor Q of the reconstructed magnetic field and find that (1) the MFR corresponds well to the high $\mathcal{T}_{w}$ region (2) the MFR outer boundary corresponds well to the high Q region, probably interpreting the bright structure at the base of the jet. The twist number of the MFR is estimated to be $\mathcal{T}_{w}=-1.54\pm 0.67$. Thus, the kink instability is regarded as the initiation mechanism of the blowout jet as $\mathcal{T}_{w}$ reaching or even exceeding the threshold value of the kink instability. Our results also indicate that the bright point at the decaying phase is actually comprised of some small loops that are heated by the reconnection occurred above. In summary, the blowout jet is mostly consistent with the scenario proposed by \citet{mcs10} except that the kink instability is found to be a possible trigger.