# Observations of Photospheric Magnetic Structure below a Dark Filament using the Hinode Spectro-Polarimeter

## TL;DR

This study uses Hinode spectro-polarimetric data to analyze the magnetic structure beneath a solar filament, providing evidence for a flux rope configuration supporting the filament.

## Contribution

It offers observational evidence distinguishing flux rope from arcade models by analyzing the magnetic polarity variation during filament passage.

## Key findings

- Detected inverse-polarity magnetic field beneath the filament.
- Found the horizontal magnetic field aligns with flux rope structure.
- Demonstrated the use of center-to-limb variation to infer magnetic topology.

## Abstract

The structure of the photospheric vector magnetic field below a dark filament on the Sun is studied using the observations of the Spectro-Polarimeter attached to the Solar Optical Telescope onboard Hinode. Special attention is paid to discriminate the two suggested models, a flux rope or a bent arcade. "Inverse-polarity" orientation is possible below the filament in a flux rope, whereas "normal-polarity" can appear in both models. We study a filament in active region NOAA 10930, which appeared on the solar disk during 2006 December. The transverse field perpendicular to the line of sight has a direction almost parallel to the filament spine with a shear angle of 30 deg, whose orientation includes the 180-degree ambiguity. To know whether it is in the normal orientation or in the inverse one, the center-to-limb variation is used for the solution under the assumption that the filament does not drastically change its magnetic structure during the passage. When the filament is near the east limb, we found that the line-of-site magnetic component below is positive, while it is negative near the west limb. This change of sign indicates that the horizontal photospheric field perpendicular to the polarity inversion line beneath the filament has an "inverse-polarity", which indicates a flux-rope structure of the filament supporting field.