Maximum Entropy Limit of Small-scale Magnetic Field Fluctuations in the Quiet Sun

Abstract

The observed magnetic field on the solar surface is characterized by a very complex spatial and temporal behavior. Although feature-tracking algorithms have allowed us to deepen our understanding of this behavior, subjectivity plays an important role in the identification and tracking of such features. In this paper, we continue studies Gorobets, A. Y., Borrero, J. M., & Berdyugina, S. 2016, ApJL, 825, L18 of the temporal stochasticity of the magnetic field on the solar surface without relying either on the concept of magnetic features or on subjective assumptions about their identification and interaction. We propose a data analysis method to quantify fluctuations of the line-of-sight magnetic field by means of reducing the temporal field's evolution to the regular Markov process. We build a representative model of fluctuations converging to the unique stationary (equilibrium) distribution in the long time limit with maximum entropy. We obtained different rates of convergence to the equilibrium at fixed noise cutoff for two sets of data. This indicates a strong influence of the data spatial resolution and mixing-polarity fluctuations on the relaxation process. The analysis is applied to observations of magnetic fields of the relatively quiet areas around an active region carried out during the second flight of the Sunrise/IMaX and quiet Sun areas at the disk center from the Helioseismic and Magnetic Imager on board the Solar Dynamics Observatory satellite.

arXiv comment11 pages, 5 figures, The Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series (accepted)

References in corpus (12)

• Sunrise: instrument, mission, data and first results
• The Imaging Magnetograph eXperiment (IMaX) for the Sunrise balloon-borne solar observatory
• The Sunrise Mission
• The second flight of the SUNRISE balloon-borne solar observatory: overview of instrument updates, the flight, the data and first results
• The Filter Imager SuFI and the Image Stabilization and Light Distribution System ISLiD of the Sunrise Balloon-Borne Observatory: Instrument Description
• Solar Magnetic Tracking. I. Software Comparison and Recommended Practices
• The Wave-Front Correction System for the Sunrise Balloon-Borne Solar Observatory
• First Detection of Chromospheric Magnetic Field Changes During an X1-Flare
• Solar Magnetic Tracking. IV. The Death of Magnetic Features
• Imaging Spectroscopy of a White-Light Solar Flare
• Solar surface and atmospheric dynamics: The Photosphere
• Markov properties of the magnetic field in the quiet solar photosphere

Cited by in corpus (2)

• The European Solar Telescope
• Stochastic entropy production in the quiet Sun magnetic fields