Bibcode
Casini, R.; Manso Sainz, R.
Referencia bibliográfica
Journal of Physics B: Atomic, Molecular, and Optical Physics, Volume 39, Issue 16, pp. 3241-3253 (2006).
Fecha de publicación:
8
2006
Número de citas
11
Número de citas referidas
8
Descripción
We study the broadband polarization of hydrogen lines produced by
scattering of radiation, in the presence of isotropic electric fields.
In this paper, we focus on two distinct problems: (a) the possibility of
detecting the presence of turbulent electric fields by polarimetric
methods and (b) the influence of such fields on the polarization due to
a macroscopic, deterministic magnetic field. We found that isotropic
electric fields decrease the degree of linear polarization in the
scattered radiation, with respect to the zero-field case. On the other
hand, a distribution of isotropic electric fields superimposed onto a
deterministic magnetic field can increase significantly the degree of
magnetic-induced, net circular polarization. This phenomenon has
important implications for the diagnostics of magnetic fields in plasmas
using hydrogen lines, because of the ubiquitous presence of the
Holtsmark microscopic electric field from neighbouring ions. In
particular, previous solar magnetographic studies of the Balmer lines of
hydrogen may need to be revised because they neglected the effect of
turbulent electric fields on the polarization signals. In this work, we
give explicit results for the Lyman α and Balmer α lines.