Polarimetric Diagnostics of Unresolved Chromospheric Magnetic Fields

TL;DR

This paper proposes that unresolved, tangled magnetic fields in the solar chromosphere can explain the observed polarization signals in HeI 10830, impacting magnetic diagnostics of solar atmospheric structures.

Contribution

It introduces a model of unresolved magnetic fields to explain polarization observations, challenging conventional scattering polarization assumptions.

Findings

Unresolved magnetic fields can account for the observed depolarization.

The model explains the dominance of the Zeeman effect over scattering polarization.

Implications for magnetic diagnostics of prominences and spicules.

Abstract

For about a decade, spectro-polarimetry of HeI 10830 has been applied to the magnetic diagnostics of the solar chromosphere. This resonance line is very versatile, as it is visible both on disk and in off-limb structures, and it has a good sensitivity to both the weak-field Hanle effect and the strong-field Zeeman effect. Recent observations of an active-region filament showed that the linear polarization was dominated by the transverse Zeeman effect, with very little or no hint of scattering polarization. This is surprising, since the HeI levels should be significantly polarized in a conventional scattering scenario. To explain the observed level of atomic depolarization by collisional or radiative processes, one must invoke plasma densities larger by several orders of magnitude than currently known values for prominences. We show that such depolarization can be explained quite naturally by the presence of an unresolved, highly entangled magnetic field, which averages to give the ordered field inferred from spectro-polarimetric data, over the typical temporal and spatial scales of the observations. We present a modeling of the polarized HeI 10830 in this scenario, and discuss its implications for the magnetic diagnostics of prominences and spicules, and for the general study of unresolved magnetic field distributions in the solar atmosphere.