HELICITY CONDENSATION AS THE ORIGIN OF CORONAL AND SOLAR WIND STRUCTURE

Three of the most important and most puzzling features of the Sun's atmosphere are the smoothness of the closed-field corona (the so-called coronal loops), the accumulation of magnetic shear at photospheric polarity inversion lines (PILs; filament channels), and the complex dynamics of the slow wind. We propose that a single process, helicity condensation, is the physical mechanism giving rise to all three features. A simplified model is presented for how helicity is injected and transported in the closed corona by magnetic reconnection. With this model, we demonstrate that magnetic shear must accumulate at PILs and coronal hole boundaries, and estimate the rate of shear growth at PILs and the loss to the wind. Our results can account for many of the observed properties of the corona and wind.