From convective stellar dynamo simulations to Zeeman-Doppler images

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Hackman, Thomas, Kochukhov, Oleg, Viviani, Mariangela, Warnecke, Jörn, Korpi-Lagg, Maarit J., Lehtinen, Jyri J.
Format: Preprint
Published: 2023
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author Hackman, Thomas
Kochukhov, Oleg
Viviani, Mariangela
Warnecke, Jörn
Korpi-Lagg, Maarit J.
Lehtinen, Jyri J.
author_facet Hackman, Thomas
Kochukhov, Oleg
Viviani, Mariangela
Warnecke, Jörn
Korpi-Lagg, Maarit J.
Lehtinen, Jyri J.
contents Zeeman-Doppler imaging (ZDI) is used to reconstruct the surface magnetic field of late-type stars from high resolution spectropolarimetric observations. The results are usually described in terms of characteristics of the field topology, i.e. poloidality vs. toroidality and axi-symmetry vs. non-axisymmetry in addition to the field strength. We want to test how well these characteristics are preserved when applying the ZDI method on simulated data, i.e. how accurately the field topology is preserved and to what extent stellar parameters influence the reconstruction. We use published magnetic field data from direct numerical MHD simulations. These have variable rotation rates, and hence represent different levels of activity, of an otherwise Sun-like setup. Our ZDI reconstruction is based on spherical harmonics expansion. By comparing the original values to those of the reconstructed images, we study the ability to reconstruct the surface magnetic field in terms of various characteristics of the field. The main large-scale features are reasonably well recovered, but the strength of the recovered magnetic field is just a fraction of the original input. The quality of the reconstruction shows clear correlations with the data quality. Furthermore, there are some spurious dependencies between stellar parameters and the characteristics of the field. Our study uncovers some limits of ZDI. Firstly, the recovered field strength will generally be lower than the "real" value as smaller structures with opposite polarities will be blurred in the inversion. Secondly, the axisymmetry is overestimated. The poloidality vs. toroidality is better recovered. The reconstruction works better for a stronger field and faster rotation velocity. Still, the ZDI method works surprisingly well even for a weaker field and slow rotation, provided the data has a high signal-to-noise and good rotation phase coverage.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2306_07838
institution arXiv
publishDate 2023
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle From convective stellar dynamo simulations to Zeeman-Doppler images
Hackman, Thomas
Kochukhov, Oleg
Viviani, Mariangela
Warnecke, Jörn
Korpi-Lagg, Maarit J.
Lehtinen, Jyri J.
Solar and Stellar Astrophysics
Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics
Zeeman-Doppler imaging (ZDI) is used to reconstruct the surface magnetic field of late-type stars from high resolution spectropolarimetric observations. The results are usually described in terms of characteristics of the field topology, i.e. poloidality vs. toroidality and axi-symmetry vs. non-axisymmetry in addition to the field strength. We want to test how well these characteristics are preserved when applying the ZDI method on simulated data, i.e. how accurately the field topology is preserved and to what extent stellar parameters influence the reconstruction. We use published magnetic field data from direct numerical MHD simulations. These have variable rotation rates, and hence represent different levels of activity, of an otherwise Sun-like setup. Our ZDI reconstruction is based on spherical harmonics expansion. By comparing the original values to those of the reconstructed images, we study the ability to reconstruct the surface magnetic field in terms of various characteristics of the field. The main large-scale features are reasonably well recovered, but the strength of the recovered magnetic field is just a fraction of the original input. The quality of the reconstruction shows clear correlations with the data quality. Furthermore, there are some spurious dependencies between stellar parameters and the characteristics of the field. Our study uncovers some limits of ZDI. Firstly, the recovered field strength will generally be lower than the "real" value as smaller structures with opposite polarities will be blurred in the inversion. Secondly, the axisymmetry is overestimated. The poloidality vs. toroidality is better recovered. The reconstruction works better for a stronger field and faster rotation velocity. Still, the ZDI method works surprisingly well even for a weaker field and slow rotation, provided the data has a high signal-to-noise and good rotation phase coverage.
title From convective stellar dynamo simulations to Zeeman-Doppler images
topic Solar and Stellar Astrophysics
Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2306.07838