Two-dipole model of the asymmetric Sun

The large-scale photospheric magnetic field is commonly thought to be mainly dipolar during sunspot minima, when magnetic fields of opposite polarity cover the solar poles. However, recent studies show that the octupole harmonics contribute comparably to the spatial power of the photospheric field at these times. Also, the even harmonics are non-zero, indicating that the Sun is hemispherically asymmetric with systematically stronger fields in the south during solar minima. We present here an analytical model of two eccentric axial dipoles of different strength, which is physically motivated by the dipole moments produced by decaying active regions. With only four parameters, this model closely reproduces the observed large-scale photospheric field and all significant coefficients of its spherical harmonics expansion, including the even harmonics responsible for the solar hemispheric asymmetry. This two-dipole model of the photospheric magnetic field also explains the southward shift of the heliospheric current sheet observed during recent solar minima.

Filament Connectivity and “Reconnection”

Stable long lived solar filaments during their lives can approach each other, merge, and form circular structures. Since filaments follow large scale polarity inversion lines of the photospheric magnetic field, their evolution reflects changes of the photospheric field distribution. On the other hand, filament interaction depends on their internal magnetic structure reviled in particular by filament chirality. Possibility of magnetic field line reconnection of neighbor filaments is discussed. Many examples of connectivity changes in a course of photospheric field evolution were found in our analysis of daily Hα filtergrams for the period of maximum activity of the solar cycle 23.

Magnetic Fields in Filaments

Filaments are present in highly non-potential magnetic configurations. On one hand, the complexity of modeling such 3-D configurations makes a useful comparison between observations and models difficult. On the other hand such highly sheared regions are more interesting and challenging for understanding eruptive phenomena like flares and coronal mass ejections. Fortunately, the presence of cold plasma allows us to measure the magnetic field inside prominences. Together with photospheric field measurements and other morphological observations, these provide a large set of puzzling constraints for plausible models of the magnetic configurations. Models are reviewed in the framework of present observational constraints with the aim to clarify a piece of the mystery which surrounds the magnetic configuration of filaments.

Magnetic Field Structures for Inverse Polarity Prominences

Observations (Leroy, 1985) have shown that most large, high prominences are of the inverse polarity type, in that the magnetic field passes through the prominence in the inverse direction to that expected from the observed photospheric field. The classic inverse polarity model of Kuperus and Raadu (1974) assumed that the prominence lies below a region of closed magnetic field lines in the neighbourhood of an O-type neutral point and above an X-type neutral point. Since the prominence must form in a low-βcoronal plasma, the pre-prominence magnetic field must have the correct topology for an inverse polarity configuration. In this paper a wide variety of different current profiles are considered in the Grad-Shafranov equation that is used to describe the equilibrium. The results of numerical solutions to the equilibrium equation indicate that a fully developed prominence will possess an O-type, but not in general an X-type neutral point.

Self-Ordering of Photospheric Magnetic Fields

We model the evolution of photospheric field elements by treating them as mean field structures undergoing a nonlinear self-interaction mediated by much smaller-scale, convectively driven plasma turbulence. Distributed fields can gather into discrete, strong elements of a minimum permitted scale. Also studied are the transport of flux from dissolving elements and to growing elements via weak intermediate fields and the cancellation of adjacent emements of opposite polarity.