Anomalous circular polarization profiles in the He I 1083.0 nm multiplet from solar spicules

Abstract

We report Stokes vector observations of solar spicules and a prominence in the He I 1083 nm multiplet carried out with the Tenerife Infrared Polarimeter. The observations show linear polarization profiles that are produced by scattering processes in the presence of a magnetic field. After a careful data reduction, we demonstrate the existence of extremely asymmetric Stokes V profiles in the spicular material that we are able to model with two magnetic components along the line of sight, and under the presence of atomic orientation in the energy levels that give rise to the multiplet. We discuss some possible scenarios that can generate the atomic orientation in spicules. We stress the importance of spectropolarimetric observations across the limb to distinguish such signals from observational artifacts.

accepted for publication in ApJ

References in corpus (4)

• Advanced Forward Modeling and Inversion of Stokes Profiles Resulting from the Joint Action of the Hanle and Zeeman Effects
• Influence of atomic polarization and horizontal illumination on the Stokes profiles of the He I 10830 multiplet
• Stray-light contamination and spatial deconvolution of slit-spectrograph observations
• Scattering polarization of hydrogen lines from electric-induced atomic alignment

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