Vol. 641
9. The Sun and the Heliosphere

Signatures of ubiquitous magnetic reconnection in the lower solar atmosphere

Magnetic reconnection is a fundamental physical process that governs a variety of high energy dynamics in the solar atmosphere, such as flares and coronal mass ejections. In the lower solar atmosphere, small-scale magnetic reconnection manifests as intense and compact brightenings in the wings of the hydrogen Balmer-a line; these manifestations are known as Ellerman bombs. Ellerman bombs are constituents of magnetically active solar regions and magnetic flux-emerging regions. Very recently, a phenomenon analogous to Ellerman bombs was discovered in regions of minimal magnetic activity on the solar surface, the quiet Sun, and termed as quiet Sun Ellerman bombs. Quiet Sun Ellerman bombs are the smallest observable magnetic reconnection phenomenon in the lower solar atmosphere. In this Letter, the authors, using high spatial resolution observations in the hydrogen Balmer-b line from the Swedish 1-m Solar Telescope, report that quiet Sun Ellerman bombs are ubiquitous and nearly uniformly distributed throughout the solar surface; there could be about half a million quiet Sun Ellerman bombs on the solar surface at any given time. The presented observations indicate that the magnetic reconnection leading to quiet Sun Ellerman bombs takes place in vertically extended current-sheets in intergranular lanes extending between the photosphere and chromosphere. It will be of great interest to study the role of this ubiquitous small-scale magnetic reconnection phenomenon in chromospheric and coronal heating.