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The Sun, the Solar Wind, and the Heliosphere pp 157–166Cite as

Current Sheets in the Solar Atmosphere

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Part of the book series: IAGA Special Sopron Book Series ((IAGA,volume 4))

Abstract

Current sheets (CSs) appear in many solar events and are invoked to account for a variety of energy release processes. In this review, which focusses on observational aspects of CSs, I will initially describe a few typical phenomena where current sheets have been assumed to play a key role and I will analyze the (mostly indirect) evidence we have for their occurrence. As a consequence of recent advances in the observations of large-scale events like Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs), we acquired an improved knowledge of CSs and of their physical parameters. Results about CSs temperature, density and resistivity, inferred from UV spectra and White Light (WL) data, as a function of time and heliocentric distance, are illustrated in some detail. The internal structure of CSs has been deemed to be unaccessible to observations, because of the small scales involved: however, recently, interesting ideas have been proposed to advance our understanding of this unexplored region. Open questions, and promising attempts to answer some of them, conclude the chapter.

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Acknowledgements

The author thanks the meeting organizers for the opportunity to participate in the session “Universal Heliophysical Processes” and give a talk there. Support from ASI/INAF/ I/023/09/0 is gratefully acknowledged.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. INAF - Arcetri Astrophysical Observatory, Largo Fermi, 5, 50125, Firenze, Italy

    Giannina Poletto

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  1. Giannina Poletto
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Correspondence to Giannina Poletto .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Center for Astrophysics, Harvard-Smithsonian, Garden St. 60, Cambridge, 02138, Massachusetts, USA

    Mari Paz Miralles

  2. Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias, La Laguna, Tenerife, 38205, Spain

    Jorge Sánchez Almeida

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Poletto, G. (2011). Current Sheets in the Solar Atmosphere. In: Miralles, M., Sánchez Almeida, J. (eds) The Sun, the Solar Wind, and the Heliosphere. IAGA Special Sopron Book Series, vol 4. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-9787-3_15

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