Kelvin-Helmholtz Instability of Kink Waves in Photospheric, Chromospheric, and X-Ray Solar Jets

One of the most enduring mysteries in solar physics is why the Sun's outer atmosphere, or corona, is millions of kelvins hotter than its surface. Among suggested theories for coronal heating are those that consider the role of various jets of plasma shooting up from just above the Sun's surface through the photosphere and chromosphere to corona. The energy carrying by the waves propagating along the jets can be dissipated and thus transferred to the medium via different mechanisms. Among the various magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) waves which can propagate in the solar atmosphere the most promising for the heating process turns out to be the so cold kink waves. These waves actually are normal modes of the MHD waves running in spatially (or magnetically) bounded flux tubes. When plasma in a flux tube floats the kink mode can become unstable if the jet's speed exceeds some threshold/critical value. The instability which appears is of the Kelvin-Helmholtz type and it can trigger MHD turbulence, more specifically Alvfen waves' turbulence. Notably this kind of turbulence is considered to be one of the main mechanisms of coronal heating. Here, we consider the conditions under which kink waves traveling on three types of solar flowing plasmas, namely photospheric jets, spicules, and X-ray jets, can become unstable against the Kelvin-Helmholtz instability.