Hierarchical analysis of the quiet Sun magnetism
Abstract
Standard statistical analysis of the magnetic properties of the quiet Sun rely on simple histograms of quantities inferred from maximum-likelihood estimations. Because of the inherent degeneracies, either intrinsic or induced by the noise, this approach is not optimal and can lead to highly biased results. We carry out a meta-analysis of the magnetism of the quiet Sun from Hinode observations using a hierarchical probabilistic method. This model allows us to infer the statistical properties of the magnetic field vector over the observed field-of-view consistently taking into account the uncertainties in each pixel due to noise and degeneracies. Our results point out that the magnetic fields are very weak, below 275 G with 95% credibility, with a slight preference for horizontal fields, although the distribution is not far from a quasi-isotropic distribution.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1410.5953,
title = {Hierarchical analysis of the quiet Sun magnetism},
author = {A. Asensio Ramos and M. J. Martínez González},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1410.5953},
year = {2014}
}
Comments
9 pages, 4 figures, accepted for publication in A&A