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Observation of Hα line impact polarization in solar flares

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Abstract

We present the results of studying the impact linear polarization of 32 solar flares of X-ray classes C, M, and X (two flares) observed with the Large Solar Vacuum Telescope. It has turned out that there is evidence for impact polarization only in 13 of them. The newly obtained data have confirmed that the linear Stokes parameters are predominantly 2–7%, while the spatial sizes of flaring points with nonzero Stokes parameters are small (1″-2″). Two features of the manifestation of impact polarization in flares revealed by these studies are of greatest interest: (1) at the two foot points of a single flare loop or an arcade of loops, both the Hα intensity profiles and the Stokes profiles differ in behavior; (2) based on the Hα line, we have found for the first time that the sign of the Stokes parameters changes not only across the flare ribbon but also with depth of the chromosphere.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Solar-Terrestrial Physics, Russian Academy of Sciences, Siberian Branch, P.O. Box 4026, Irkutsk, 664033, Russia

    N. M. Firstova, V. I. Polyakov & A. V. Firstova

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  1. N. M. Firstova
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  2. V. I. Polyakov
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  3. A. V. Firstova
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Correspondence to N. M. Firstova.

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Original Russian Text © N.M. Firstova, V.I. Polyakov, A.V. Firstova, 2014, published in Pis’ma v Astronomicheskiĭ Zhurnal, 2014, Vol. 40, No. 7, pp. 498–508.

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Firstova, N.M., Polyakov, V.I. & Firstova, A.V. Observation of Hα line impact polarization in solar flares. Astron. Lett. 40, 449–458 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1134/S1063773714070032

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