G. Hornig, M.H. Page

What if there were a way to identify **where** the magnetic helicity is concentrated within a three- dimensional magnetic field? At first sight this question appears meaningless, since magnetic helicity is an integral over the whole volume of the magnetic field. But, in fact, it is possible to decompose this total helicity as an integral over individual "field line helicities" for each magnetic field line in the domain. All of these are ideal-invariant, topological quantities, and they allow us to quantify in a meaningful way how magnetic helicity is distributed within the domain. In this talk, I will show how this idea can be practically applied to typical extrapolations of the Sun's coronal magnetic field that are used in solar physics.