The Coronal Emission of Photospheric Magnetic Fragments

This paper examines the relationship between magnetic dipoles in the photosphere and X-ray bright points (XBPs) in the corona, using an XBP special campaign dataset obtained by the Yohkoh SXT and the NSO/Kitt Peak magnetograph. We find that for the cases where a simple dipole exists in the photosphere, the condition that they are separated by a distance less than the interaction distance defined by Longcope1998 is favorable for an XBP to be observed. For the cases where the magnetic topology is more complicated due to the addition of an extra fragment, we find that the geometry of the magnetic fragments is a major factor that determines if an XBP is observed. XBPs are more likely to be formed above magnetic fragments arranged in such a way that photospheric motions giving rise to reconnection between any two fragments will also give rise to reconnection with the remaining fragment.