Fredagskollokvium: Vortex flows and magnetic fields in the quiet Sun

Solar surface convection displays highly localized sinks where cold plasma returns to the solar interior. Angular momentum conservation forces the plasma to spin up as it approaches the sink, thus producing vortices at the downdrafts. On its way the plasma can also advect and intensify magnetic fields up to kG field strengths. Such theoretical predictions strengthen the idea that localized downdrafts are places where the concentration of magnetic fields is favored. The observational discovery of convectively driven sinks is rather recent, however, and its role in the formation and evolution of quiet-Sun magnetic features is still poorly characterized. In our work, we provide both quantitative and qualitative bases for the association between vortex flows and magnetic fields using high spatial resolution spectropolarimetric data acquired with the Imaging Magnetograph eXperiment on board Sunrise.