Dextral filaments dominate in the northern hemisphere and sinistral in the southern.
A model consistent with the observations is developed with magnetic sources that represent the network flux on both sides of the channel and extra concentrations of flux that produce the strong field component along the channel. We suggest that it is the imbalance of flux locations along the channel that creates the field of a filament channel. The resulting separatrix surfaces have distinct upper and lower boundaries that may produce the upper boundary of the filament cavity or filament and the lower boundary of the filament. The model is applied to a specific filament channel, with discrete sources and sinks that represent the flux observed in a photospheric magnetogram. Back to Group Research page.