Dynamic processes occurring in solar active regions are dominated by the solar magnetic field. As of now, observations using a solar magnetograph have supplied us with the vector components of a solar photospheric magnetic field. The two transverse components of a photospheric magnetic field allow us to compute the amount of electric current. We found that the electric current in areas with positive (negative) polarity due to the longitudinal magnetic field have both positive and negative signs in an active region, however, the net current is found to be an order-of-magnitude less than the mean absolute magnitude and has a preferred sign. In particular, we have statistically found that there is a systematic net electric current from areas with negative (positive) polarity to areas with positive (negative) polarity in solar active regions in the northern (southern) hemisphere, but during the solar minimum this tendency is reversed over time at some latitudes. The result indicates that there is weak net electric current in areas of solar active regions with opposite polarity, thus providing further details about the hemispheric helicity rule found in a series of previous studies.
Polarization calibration unit(PCU) has become an indispensable element for solar telescopes to remove the instrumental polarization; the polarimetric accuracy of calibration depends strongly on the properties of PCU. In the paper, we analyze the measurement errors induced by PCU based on polarized light theory and find that the imperfections of the waveplate generate the main calibration errors. An optimized calibration method is proposed to avoid the effects from waveplate imperfections, and a numerical simulation is given to evaluate the polarization accuracy by analyzing the relation between calibration error and intensity instability. The work is very important for solar telescopes with high polarization precision up to 10^(-4) I_c.
