Introduction

The IAA’s Solar Physics Group is a young and dynamic research group whose main scientific interests root in solar spectropolarimetry and magnetic fields from all the three points of view: theoretical, observational, and instrumental. Investigations and developments are carried out on: 

a) the radiative transfer equation (RTE) for polarized light in the presence of magnetic fields, in order to work out the sensitivities of the Stokes spectrum on the various physical quantities of the solar photosphere,
b) the inversion of the RTE for its use on the interpretation of spectropolarimetric measurements in terms of the thermodynamic, magnetic, and dynamic parameters of the Sun,
c) the structure and physical nature of photospheric magnetic structures like plage and network flux tubes, the umbra, the penumbra, and the moat of sunspots, and the inter-network magnetic fields,
d) the design, development, and construction of solar instrumentation.

The group starts in 1998 with the arrival to Granada of Dr. del Toro Iniesta coming from the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC). With the IAA involvement in 2002 into the Spanish group of four institutions (others are the IAC, the Instituto Nacional de Tecnología Aerospacial, INTA, and the Grupo de Astronomía y Ciencias del Espacio, GACE (from the University of Valencia) for the development of IMaX (Imaging Magnetograph eXperiment), a number of engineers incorporate into the group: Dr. López Jiménez, Mr. Herranz de la Revilla, Mr. Jerónimo Zafra, Mr. Girela Rejón, and Drs. Rodríguez Gómez and Castro Marín. The two latter left the group in 2004 to contribute to other instrumentation projects of the IAA. Three more engineers, Mr. Morales Muñoz, Mr. Mellado Sánchez, and Mr. Castillo Lorenzo, are hired in 2003 and 2004. The first two engineers left the group in 2009 and the latter in 2007. In 2003, the group receives its first PhD student, Mr. D. Cabrera Solana, who was awarded his PhD title in 2007 from the University of Granada with a thesis entitled Temporal evolution of the Evershed flow and its magnetic properties. In 2004, Dr. Bellot Rubio, a Ramón y Cajal fellow, gets into the group. He has got a permanent position as a Tenure Scientist of the Spanish Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC) in 2007. Also in 2004, a second PhD student, Mr. Orozco Suárez, enters the group. He has been awarded his PhD degree from the University of Granada with a thesis entitled Diffraction-limited spectropolarimetry of quiet-Sun magnetic fields. In 2007, a new engineer, Mrs. Sanz Mesa was hired and in 2009 she left the group. In 2008, three new engineers have been hired, namely, Mrs. Balaguer Jiménez, Mr. Álvarez García, and Mr. Cobos Carrascosa. Also in 2008, Dr. Ferriz Mas, an associate professor from the University of Vigo has joined the team to contribute with mostly theoretical investigations. Finally, in 2009 the physicist Mr. Ramos Más and the engineer Mrs. Aparicio del Moral joined the group.