No Arabic abstract
The Sun is replete with magnetic fields, with sunspots, pores and plage regions being their most prominent representatives on the solar surface. But even far away from these active regions, magnetic fields are ubiquitous. To a large extent, their importance for the thermodynamics in the solar photosphere is determined by the total magnetic flux. Whereas in low-flux quiet Sun regions, magnetic structures are shuffled around by the motion of granules, the high-flux areas like sunspots or pores effectively suppress convection, leading to a temperature decrease of up to 3000 K. The importance of magnetic fields to the conditions in higher atmospheric layers, the chromosphere and corona, is indisputable. Magnetic fields in both active and quiet regions are the main coupling agent between the outer layers of the solar atmosphere, and are therefore not only involved in the structuring of these layers, but also for the transport of energy from the solar surface through the corona to the interplanetary space. Consequently, inference of magnetic fields in the photosphere, and especially in the chromosphere, is crucial to deepen our understanding not only for solar phenomena such as chromospheric and coronal heating, flares or coronal mass ejections, but also for fundamental physical topics like dynamo theory or atomic physics. In this review, we present an overview of significant advances during the last decades in measurement techniques, analysis methods, and the availability of observatories, together with some selected results. We discuss the problems of determining magnetic fields at smallest spatial scales, connected with increasing demands on polarimetric sensitivity and temporal resolution, and highlight some promising future developments for their solution.
In order to investigate the relation between magnetic structures and the signatures of heating in plage regions, we observed a plage region with the He I 1083.0 nm and Si I 1082.7 nm lines on 2018 October 3 using the integral field unit mode of the GREGOR Infrared Spectrograph (GRIS) installed at the GREGOR telescope. During the GRIS observation, the Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph (IRIS) obtained spectra of the ultraviolet Mg II doublet emitted from the same region. In the periphery of the plage region, within the limited field of view seen by GRIS, we find that the Mg II radiative flux increases with the magnetic field in the chromosphere with a factor of proportionality of 2.38 times 10^4 erg cm^{-2} s^{-1} G^{-1}. The positive correlation implies that magnetic flux tubes can be heated by Alfven wave turbulence or by collisions between ions and neutral atoms relating to Alfven waves. Within the plage region itself, the radiative flux was large between patches of strong magnetic field strength in the photosphere, or at the edges of magnetic patches. On the other hand, we do not find any significant spatial correlation between the enhanced radiative flux and the chromospheric magnetic field strength or the electric current. In addition to the Alfven wave turbulence or collisions between ions and neutral atoms relating to Alfven waves, other heating mechanisms related to magnetic field perturbations produced by interactions of magnetic flux tubes could be at work in the plage chromosphere.
Coronal and chromospheric magnetic fields are derived from polarization and spectral observations of the thermal free-free emission using the Nobeyama Radioheliograph (NoRH). In magnetized plasma, the ordinary and extraordinary modes of free-free emission have different optical depths. This creates a circularly polarized component in an atmosphere with a temperature gradient. We observed an active region on April 13, 2012 to derive its coronal and chromospheric magnetic fields. The observed degree of circular polarization was between 0.5 % and 1.7 %. The radio circular polarization images were compared with ultraviolet images observed by the Atmospheric Imaging Assembly and the photospheric magnetic field observed by the Helioseismic and Magnetic Imager, both on board the Solar Dynamic Observatory. At the edge of the active region, the radio circular polarization was emitted mainly from coronal loops, and the coronal magnetic field was derived to be about 70 G. At the center of the active region, the chromospheric and coronal components cannot be separated. The derived magnetic field is about 20 % to 50 % of the corresponding photospheric magnetic field, which is an emission-measure-weighted average of the coronal and chromospheric magnetic fields.
Context. A proper estimate of the chromospheric magnetic fields is believed to improve modelling of both active region and coronal mass ejection evolution. Aims. We investigate the similarity between the chromospheric magnetic field inferred from observations and the field obtained from a magnetohydrostatic (MHS) extrapolation. Methods. Based Fe i 6173 {AA} and Ca ii 8542 {AA} observations of NOAA active region 12723, we employed the spatially-regularised weak-field approximation (WFA) to derive the vector magnetic field in the chromosphere from Ca ii, as well as non-LTE
Recently, there have been some reports of unusually strong photospheric magnetic fields (which can reach values of over 7 kG) inferred from Hinode SOT/SP sunspot observations within penumbral regions. These superstrong penumbral fields are even larger than the strongest umbral fields on record and appear to be associated with supersonic downflows. The finding of such fields has been controversial since they seem to show up only when spatially coupled
Chromospheric rapid blueshifted excursions (RBEs) are suggested to be the disk counterparts of type II spicules at the limb and believed to contribute to the coronal heating process. Previous identification of RBEs was mainly based on feature detection using Dopplergrams. In this paper, we study RBEs on 2011 October 21 in a very quiet region at the disk center, which were observed with the high-cadence imaging spectroscopy of the Ca II 8542 A line from the Interferometric Bidimensional Spectrometer (IBIS). By using an automatic spectral analysis algorithm, a total of 98 RBEs are identified during a 11 minute period. Most of these RBEs have either a round or elongated shape, with an average area of 1.2 arcsec^2. The detailed temporal evolution of spectra from IBIS makes possible a quantitative determination of the velocity (~16 km/s) and acceleration (~400 m/s^2) of Ca II 8542 RBEs, and reveal an additional deceleration (~-160 m/s^2) phase that usually follows the initial acceleration. In addition, we also investigate the association of RBEs with the concomitant photospheric magnetic field evolution, using coordinated high-resolution and high-sensitivity magnetograms made by Hinode. Clear examples are found where RBEs appear to be associated with the preceding magnetic flux emergence and/or the subsequent flux cancellation. However, a further analysis with the aid of the Southwest Automatic Magnetic Identification Suite does not yield a significant statistical association between these RBEs and magnetic field evolution. We discuss the implications of our results in the context of understanding the driving mechanism of RBEs.