Magnetic Helicity Injection by Horizontal Flows in the Quiet Sun: II. Self Helicity Flux

The helicity flux from winding motions in isolated, quiet-sun magnetic flux elements can be expressed as a sum of mutual-helicity flux (from the braiding of field lines from distinct elements), and a self-helicity flux (from the braiding of field lines in individual elements). In a previous paper, we used a tracking algorithm applied to five sequences of high-cadence, high-resolution SoHO MDI magnetograms (each eight hours or longer) to quantify the quiet-sun mutual-helicity flux. Here, we use the same data sets and tracking routines to quantify the quiet-sun self-helicity flux, from the time evolution of the quadrupole moments of individual magnetic flux elements. No systematic injection of self-helicity from the quiet sun is obvious in our results, leading us to conclude that there is essentially no mean self-helicity flux from winding motions in quiet sun fields.