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arxiv 2309.12880 v1 pith:36GU6REW submitted 2023-09-22 astro-ph.SR

The impact of angle-dependent partial frequency redistribution on the scattering polarization of the solar Na i D lines

classification astro-ph.SR
keywords linesfieldsmagneticpolarizationprd-aaprd-adaccountingapproximation
verification ladder T0 review T1 audit T2 compute T3 formal T4 reserved
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The long-standing paradox of the linear polarization signal of the Na i D1 line was recently resolved by accounting for the atom's hyperfine structure and the detailed spectral structure of the incident radiation field. That modeling relied on the simplifying angle-averaged (AA) approximation for partial frequency redistribution (PRD) in scattering, which potentially neglects important angle-frequency couplings. This work aims at evaluating the suitability of a PRD-AA modeling for the D1 and D2 lines through comparisons with general angle-dependent (AD) PRD calculations, both in the absence and presence of magnetic fields. We solved the radiative transfer problem for polarized radiation in a one-dimensional semi-empirical atmospheric model with microturbulent and isotropic magnetic fields, accounting for PRD effects, comparing PRD-AA and PRD-AD modelings. The D1 and D2 lines are modeled separately as two-level atomic system with hyperfine structure. The numerical results confirm that a spectrally structured radiation field induces linear polarization in the D1 line. However, the PRD-AA approximation greatly impacts the Q/I shape, producing an antisymmetric pattern instead of the more symmetric PRD-AD one, while presenting a similar sensitivity to magnetic fields between 10 and 200 G. Under the PRD-AA approximation, the Q/I profile of the D2 line presents an artificial dip in its core, which is not found for the PRD-AD case. We conclude that accounting for PRD-AD effects is essential to suitably model the scattering polarization of the Na i D lines. These results bring us closer to exploiting the full diagnostic potential of these lines for the elusive chromospheric magnetic fields.

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