by
Luis Bellot Rubio(Instituto de Astrofisica de Andalucia)
→
Europe/Stockholm
FC61
FC61
Description
he quiet Sun is the region of the solar surface outside of sunspots
and pores. In intensity images it appears dominated by granular
convection. However, in polarized light the quiet Sun exhibits
impressive magnetic activity on a broad range of scales, from the
30000 km of the photospheric network down to the 100 km of the
smallest magnetic features observed in the interior of supergranular
cells - the solar internetwork. Internetwork magnetic fields evolve in
a coherent way, interacting with each other as they are advected
towards the network by the horizontal supergranular flows. They appear
continually, bringing enormous amounts of magnetic flux to the solar
surface. Part of this flux disappears through cancellation with
preexisting fields, which may be an important mechanism for
chromospheric heating. Quiet Sun fields are difficult to observe
because they produce weak polarization signals, so their evolution and
nature remain largely unknown. However, in the last years we have made
significant progress thanks to the availability of high spatial resolution,
high sensitivity spectropolarimetric measurements from space and from
the ground. In this talk I will review our current knowledge of the quiet
Sun magnetism, paying special attention to the properties of internetwork
fields, their modes of appearance and disappearance, their interactions,
the way they couple the various layers of the solar atmosphere, and
their origin and nature. The most important open questions will be
identified and some ideas on how to answer them will be presented.
