Related papers: The key role of solar dynamics in the chromospheri…
Due to the quick evolution of the solar chromosphere, its magnetic field cannot be inferred reliably without accounting for the temporal variations of its polarized light. This has been broadly overlooked in the modelling and interpretation…
Exposing the polarization signatures of the solar chromosphere requires studying its temporal variations, which is rarely done when modelling and interpreting scattering and Hanle signals. The present contribution sketches the scientific…
The main goal of this thesis has been to investigate the effects that the macroscopic vertical velocity fields have on the scattering polarization signals formed in the solar chromosphere. Until now, the impact of macroscopic motions had…
This paper addresses the modelling issue of the linearly-polarized solar limb spectrum, which is due to scattering processes and it offers a rich diagnostic potential for exploring solar magnetic fields via the Hanle effect. However, this…
This paper shows the first synthetic tomography of the quiet solar chromosphere formed by spatial maps of scattering polarization. It has been calculated for the CaII 8498, 8542 and 3934 A lines by solving the NLTE (non-local…
This article presents an introduction to optical pumping, atomic polarization and the Hanle effect in weakly magnetized stellar atmospheres. Although the physical processes and the theoretical framework described here are of interest for…
Scattering of light from an anisotropic source produces linear polarization in spectral lines and the continuum. In the outer layers of a stellar atmosphere the anisotropy of the radiation field is typically dominated by the radiation…
A particularly interesting line for exploring the physical conditions of the quiet solar chromosphere is H$\alpha$, but its intensity profile is magnetically insensitive and the small circular polarization signatures produced by the…
The Hanle effect in strong spectral lines is the physical mechanism that should be increasingly exploited for quantitative explorations of the magnetism of the quiet solar chromospheric plasma. Here we show, by means of multilevel radiative…
Is it physically feasible to perform chromospheric diagnosis using spatial maps of scattering polarization at the solar disk center? To investigate it we synthesized polarization maps (in 8542 Angstroms) resulting from MHD solar models and…
Scattering line polarization and the Hanle effect are among the most important mechanisms for diagnostics of the solar and stellar atmospheres. The fact that real stellar atmospheres are horizontally inhomogeneous makes the spectral…
A big challenge in solar and stellar physics in the coming years will be to decipher the magnetism of the solar outer atmosphere (chromosphere and corona) along with its dynamic coupling with the magnetic fields of the underlying…
One of the key research problems in stellar physics is to decipher the small-scale magnetic activity of the quiet solar atmosphere. Recent magneto-convection simulations that account for small-scale dynamo action have provided…
Chromospheric magnetic fields are notoriously diffcult to measure. The chromospheric lines are broad, while the fields are producing a minuscule Zeeman-effect polarization. A promising diagnostic alternative is provided by the…
Magnetic fields in turbulent, convective high-$\beta$ plasma naturally develop highly tangled and complex topologies---the solar photosphere being the paradigmatic example. These fields are mostly undetectable by standard diagnostic…
The linear polarization produced by scattering processes in the hydrogen Lyman alpha line of the solar disk radiation is a key observable for probing the chromosphere-corona transition region (TR) and the underlying chromospheric plasma.…
Velocity gradients in a stellar atmospheric plasma have an impact on the anisotropy of the radiation field that illuminates each point within the medium, and this may in principle influence the scattering line polarization that results from…
Aims: This paper extends previous studies in modeling time varying linear polarization due to axisymmetric magnetic fields in rotating stars. We use the Hanle effect to predict variations in net line polarization, and use geometric…
We highlight the main results of a three-dimensional (3D) multilevel radiative transfer investigation about the solar disk-center polarization of the Ca {\sc ii} 8542 \AA\ line. First, we investigate the linear polarization due to the…
The only way to obtain reliable empirical information on the intensity and topology of the weak magnetic fields of the quiet solar chromosphere is via the measurement and rigorous physical interpretation of polarization signals in…