Bibcode
Viticchié, B.; Sánchez-Almeida, J.; Del Moro, D.; Berrilli, F.
Bibliographical reference
Astronomy and Astrophysics, Volume 526, id.A60
Advertised on:
2
2011
Journal
Citations
38
Refereed citations
30
Description
Stokes profiles emerging from the magnetized solar photosphere and
observed by SOT/SP aboard the HINODE satellite exhibit a variety of
complex shapes. These are indicative of unresolved magnetic structures
that have been overlooked in the inversion analyses performed so far.
Here we present the first interpretation of the Stokes profile
asymmetries measured in the ion{Fe}{i} 630 nm lines by SOT/SP, in both
quiet Sun internetwork (IN) and network regions. The inversion is
carried out based on the hypothesis of MIcro-Structured Magnetized
Atmosphere (MISMA), where the unresolved structure is assumed to be
optically thin. We analyze a 29.52 arcsec × 31.70 arcsec subfield
carefully selected to be representative of the properties of a 302
arcsec × 162 arcsec quiet Sun field-of-view (FOV) at the disk
center. The inversion code is able to reproduce the observed asymmetries
in a very satisfactory way, including 35% of the inverted profiles with
large asymmetries. The inversion code interprets 25% of inverted
profiles as emerging from pixels in which both positive and negative
polarities coexist. These pixels are located in either frontiers between
opposite polarity patches or very quiet regions. The kG field strengths
are found at the base of the photosphere in both network and IN regions;
in the case of the latter, both kG fields and hG fields are admixed.
When considering the magnetic properties of the mid photosphere, most kG
fields do not exist, and the statistics is dominated by hG fields.
According to the magnetic filling factors derived from the inversion, we
constrain the magnetic field of only 4.5% of the analyzed photosphere
(and this percentage reduces to 1.3% when considering all pixels,
including those with low polarization that have not been analyzed). The
properties of the rest of the plasma imply that weak fields do not
contribute to the detected polarization signals. The average flux
densities derived in the full subfield and IN regions are higher than
those derived from the same dataset by Milne-Eddington (ME) inversion.
We detect large asymmetries in the HINODE SOT/SP polarization profiles.
These are not negligible in quiet Sun data. The MISMA inversion code
reproduces them in a satisfactory way, and provides a statistical
description of the magnetized IN and network which partly differs and
complements the results obtained so far. The importance of having a
complete interpretation of the line profile shapes is therefore clearly
evident.