Bidirectional propagating brightenings in arch filament systems observed by Solar Orbiter/EUI

Arch filament systems (AFSs) are chromospheric and coronal manifestations of emerging magnetic flux. Using high spatial resolution observations taken at a high cadence by the Extreme Ultraviolet Imager (EUI) on board Solar Orbiter, we identified small-scale elongated brightenings within the AFSs. These brightenings appear as bidirectional flows along the threads of AFSs. For our study, we investigated the coordinated observations of the AFSs acquired by the EUI instrument and the Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (AIA) on board the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) on 2022 March 4 and 17. We analyzed 15 bidirectional propagating brightenings from EUI 174 Å images. These brightenings reached propagating speeds of 100–150 km s−1. The event observed on March 17 exhibits blob-like structures, which may be signatures of plasmoids and due to magnetic reconnection. In this case, we also observed counterparts in the running difference slit-jaw images in the 1400 Å passbands taken by the Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph (IRIS). Most events show co-temporal intensity variations in all AIA EUV passbands. Together, this implies that these brightenings in the AFSs are dominated by emission from cool plasma with temperatures well below 1 MK. The Polarimetric and Helioseismic Imager (PHI) on board Solar Orbiter provides photospheric magnetograms at a similar spatial resolution as EUI and from the same viewing angle. The magnetograms taken by PHI show signatures of flux emergence beneath the brightenings. This suggests that the events in the AFSs are triggered by magnetic reconnection that may occur between the newly emerging magnetic flux and the preexisting magnetic field structures in the middle of the AFSs. This would also give a natural explanation for the bidirectional propagation of the brightenings near the apex of the AFSs. The interaction of the preexisting field and the emerging flux may be important for mass and energy transfer within the AFSs.