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Much progress has been made in recent years in understanding the complex physics of polarized radiation in the sun and stars. This physics includes vector radiative transfer and spectral line formation in the presence of magnetic fields, scattering theory and coherence effects, partial redistribution and turbulent magnetic fields, numerical techniques and Stokes inversion, as well as concepts for polarimetric imaging with a precision limited only by photon statistics. The present volume gives a comprehensive and up-to-date account of this rapidly evolving field of science.
List of contents
Scattering Physics.- The Density Matrix Approach to Polarized Radiative Transfer.- Atomic Coherences and Level-Crossings Physics.- Partial Frequency Redistribution of Polarized Radiation.- Partial Redistribution Effects on Line Polarization in the Presence of Velocity Fields.- Diagnostics with the Hanle Effect.- The First and Second Order Moments of the Polarization Profiles of Hydrogen Lines.- Magnetic Polarimetric Refraction in the Solar Corona.- Numerical Methods in Polarized Radiative Transfer.- Non-LTE Polarized Radiative Transfer in Intermediate Magnetic Fields: Numerical Problems and Results.- The Polarization-Free Approximation.- The Polarization-Free Approxima-tion Applied to Multi-Level Non-LTE Radiative Transfer.- Stokes Profiles Inversion Tech-niques.- Contribution Functions for Polarized Radiative Transfer.- Net Circular Polarization in Magnetic Spectral Lines Produced by Velocity Gradients: Some Analytical Results.- Micro-Structured Magnetic Atmospheres.- A Complex Diagnostic of Solar Prominences.- Polarized Radiation Diagnostics of Magnetohydrodynamic Models of the Solar Atmosphere.- Recent Progress in Imaging Polarimetry.- The Influence of Sunspot Canopies on Magnetic Inclination Measurements in Solar Plages.- Measurement of the Full Stokes Vector of He.- Inversion of Stokes Vector Profiles in Terms of a 3-Component Model.- Field Azimuth Disambiguation Using Ambiguity-Free Currents.- High Resolution Observations of Small-Scale Magnetic Elements and Interpretation.- Polarimetry of Solar Pores.- High Resolution Polarimetric Measurements in a Sunspot.- Magnetic Fields of Sunspots Based on Combined Optical and Radio Observations.- Polarimetric Study of Solar Flares.- Characteristics of the Linear Polarization Observed in the 16 May 1991 Solar Flare.- FourierParameters and Moments of Polarization Profiles of Magnetically Active Lines. Fourier Vector Magnetograph.- Aspects of the Zero Level Problem of Solar Magnetographs.- Singular Points of the Polarization Tensor.- Determination of Polarization of Vacuum-Ultraviolet Radiation by Fluorescence and Probe- Beam Techniques.- Balloon-Borne Polarimetry.- Zeeman-Doppler Imaging of Solar-Type Stars: Multi Line Technique.- Author Index.- List of Participants.
