  When magnetic flux emerges from beneath the photosphere it displaces the
preexisting field in the corona, and a current sheet generally forms at the
boundary between the old and new magnetic domains. Reconnection in the current
sheet relaxes this highly stressed configuration to a lower energy state. This
scenario is most familiar, and most often studied, in flares, where the flux
transfer is rapid. We present here a study of steady, quiescent flux transfer
occurring at a rate three orders of magnitude below that in a large flare. In
particular we quantify the reconnection rate, and related energy release,
occurring as new polarity emerges to form Active Region 11112
(2010-10-16T00:S18W14) within a region of preexisting flux. A bright, low lying
kernel of coronal loops above the emerging polarity, observed with AIA onboard
SDO and XRT onboard Hinode, originally shows magnetic connectivity only between
regions of newly emerged flux when overlaid on magnetograms from HMI. Over the
course of several days, this bright kernel advances into the preexisting flux.
The advancement of an easily visible boundary into the old flux regions allows
measurement of the rate of reconnection between old and new magnetic domains.
We compare the reconnection rate to the inferred heating of the coronal plasma.
To our knowledge, this is the first measurement of steady, quiescent heating
related to reconnection. We determine that the newly emerged flux reconnects at
a fairly steady rate of 0.38e16 Mx/s over two days, while the radiated power
varies between 2~8e25 erg/s over the same time. We find that as much as 40% of
the total emerged flux at any given time may have reconnected. The total amount
of transferred flux (1e21 Mx) and radiated energy (7.2e30 ergs) are comparable
to that of a large M- or small X-class flare, but are stretched out over 45
hours.
