Abstract
The problem of (dc) magnetic field energy build up in the solar atmosphere is addressed. Although large-scale current generation may be due to large-scale shearing motions in the photosphere, recently a new approach was proposed: under the assumption that the magnetic field evolves through a sequence of force-free states, Seehafer (1994) found that the energy of small-scale fluctuations may be transferred into energy of large-scale currents in an AR (the α-effect). The necessary condition for the α-effect is revealed by the presence of a predominant sign of current helicity over the volume under consideration. We studied how frequently such a condition may occur in ARs. On the basis of vector magnetic field measurements we calculated the current helicity B z · (▽ × B) z in the photosphere over the whole AR area for 40 active regions and obtained the following results: The method proposed can be applied to those ARs where the determination of the predominant sign of current helicity by traditional visual inspection of Hα-patterns is not reliable.
Published Version
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