Abstract
Observing the solar atmosphere with ground-based telescopes in the near-infrared has a number of advantages when compared to classical measurements in visible wavelengths. One of them comes from the magnetic sensitivity of spectral lines, which varies as ${\lambda}_g$, where g is the effective $Land{\acute{e}}$ factor of the transition. This wavelength dependence makes the near-infrared range adequate to study subtle spatial or temporal variations of the magnetic field. Spectral lines, such as the photospheric Fe I $1.5648{\mu}m$ spectral line, with a $Land{\acute{e}}$ factor g=3, have often been used in the past for this type of studies. To study the chromosphere, the Ca II IR triplet and the He I $1.0830{\mu}m$ triplet are the most often observed lines. The latter has the additional advantage that the photospheric Si I $1.0827{\mu}m$ is close enough so that photosphere and chromosphere can be simultaneously recorded with a single detector in a spectrograph. The instrument TIP (Tenerife Infrared Polarimeter) has been continuously operating since 1999 at the 70-cm German VTT of the Observatorio del Teide and has been recently moved to the 1.5-m German GREGOR. During all this time, results have been obtained concerning the nature of the weak photospheric magnetic field of the quiet sun, magneto-acoustic wave propagation, evolution with the cycle of sunspot magnetic fields, photospheric and chromospheric magnetic field in emerging regions, magnetic field in chromospheric structures such as filaments, prominences, flares, and spicules, etc. In this talk, I will review the main results obtained after all these observations and mention the main challenges for the future. With its novel polarization-free design and a complete suite of instruments aimed at simultaneous (imaging and spectroscopic) observations of the solar photosphere and chromosphere, the EST (European Solar Telescope) will represent a major world-wide infrastructure to understand the physical nature of all these phenomena.