Formation of quadrupolar-like structure via flux emergence on the Sun

  • Published : 2011.10.05

Abstract

The emergence of a magnetic flux tube (flux emergence) is a process of transporting magnetic field from the solar interior to the atmosphere. This process naturally produces bipolar structure at the surface, in which emerging field lines simply connect opposite polarities, while observations suggest that the surface distribution of magnetic field is more complicated than a simple bipole. This study is aimed at solving this apparent mismatch between the model and observations, showing how the surface distribution changes from a simple bipolar distribution to a quadrupolar-like one, where a half-turn rotation of the polarity inversion line plays an important role. We explain the physical reason of this half-turn rotation and also discuss a possible configuration of filament magnetic field in terms of the quadrupolar-like structure formed via flux emergence.

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