A Statistical Inference Method for Interpreting the CLASP Observations

• Published in: The Astrophysical journal Vol. 865; no. 1; pp. 48 - 58
• Main Authors: Št pán, J., Bueno, J. Trujillo, Belluzzi, L., Ramos, A. Asensio, Sainz, R. Manso, Alemán, T. del Pino, Casini, R., Kano, R., Winebarger, A., Auchère, F., Ishikawa, R., Narukage, N., Kobayashi, K., Bando, T., Katsukawa, Y., Kubo, M., Ishikawa, S., Giono, G., Hara, H., Suematsu, Y., Shimizu, T., Sakao, T., Tsuneta, S., Ichimoto, K., Cirtain, J., Champey, P., Pontieu, B. De, Carlsson, M.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Philadelphia The American Astronomical Society 20-09-2018; IOP Publishing; University of Chicago Press; American Astronomical Society
• Subjects: Astrophysics; Chromosphere; Corona; Hydrogen; Linear polarization; Magnetic fields; methods: statistical; Physics; Polarization; Radiation; radiative transfer; Solar and Stellar Astrophysics; Statistical inference; Sun: chromosphere; Sun: transition region
• ISSN: 0004-637X; 1538-4357
• DOI: 10.3847/1538-4357/aad910

On 2015 September 3, the Chromospheric Lyman-Alpha SpectroPolarimeter (CLASP) successfully measured the linear polarization produced by scattering processes in the hydrogen Ly line of the solar disk radiation, revealing conspicuous spatial variations in the Q/I and U/I signals. Via the Hanle effect, the line-center Q/I and U/I amplitudes encode information on the magnetic field of the chromosphere-corona transition region, but they are also sensitive to the three-dimensional structure of this corrugated interface region. With the help of a simple line-formation model, here we propose a statistical inference method for interpreting the Ly line-center polarization observed by CLASP.