119279122
Recovering Joy’s Law as a Function of Solar Cycle, Hemisphere, and Longitude
Bipolar active regions in both hemispheres tend to be tilted with respect to the East–West Equator of the Sun in accordance with Joy’s law, which describes the average tilt angle as a function of latitude. Mt. Wilson Observatory data from 1917 – 1985 are used to analyze the active-region tilt angle as a function of solar cycle, hemisphere, and longitude, in addition to the more common dependence on latitude. Our main results are as follows: i) We recommend a revision of Joy’s law towards a weaker dependence on latitude (slope of 0.13 – 0.26) and without forcing the tilt to zero at the Equator. ii) We determine that the hemispheric mean tilt value of active regions varies with each solar cycle, although the noise from a stochastic process dominates and does not allow for a determination of the slope of Joy’s law on an 11-year time scale. iii) The hemispheric difference in mean tilt angles, 1.1∘±0.27, over Cycles 16 to 21 was significant to a three-σ level, with average tilt angles in the Northern and Southern hemispheres of 4.7∘±0.26 and 3.6∘±0.27, respectively. iv) Area-weighted mean tilt angles normalized by latitude for Cycles 15 to 21 anticorrelate with cycle strength for the southern hemisphere and whole-Sun data, confirming previous results by Dasi-Espuig et al. (Astron. Astrophys.518, A7, 2010). The Northern Hemispheric mean tilt angles do not show a dependence on cycle strength. v) Mean tilt angles do not show a dependence on longitude for any hemisphere or cycle. In addition, the standard deviation of the mean tilt is 29 – 31∘ for all cycles and hemispheres, indicating that the scatter is due to the same consistent process even if the mean tilt angles vary.
15630684
The Solar Oxygen Crisis: Probably Not the Last Word
In this work we present support for recent claims that advocate a downward revision of the solar oxygen abundance. Our analysis employs spatially resolved spectropolarimetric observations including the Fe I lines at 6302 A and the O I infrared triplet around 7774 A in the quiet Sun. We used the Fe I lines to reconstruct the three-dimensional thermal and magnetic structure of the atmosphere. The simultaneous O I observations were then employed to determine the abundance of oxygen at each pixel, using both LTE and non-LTE (NLTE) approaches to the radiative transfer. In this manner, we obtain values of log O = 8.63 (NLTE) and 8.93 (LTE) dex. We find an unsettling fluctuation of the oxygen abundance over the field of view. This is likely an artifact indicating that, even with this relatively refined strategy, important physical ingredients are still missing in the picture. By examining the spatial distribution of the abundance, we estimate realistic confidence limits of approximately 0.1 dex.
125139127
Proposal to measure the rare decay K+ ---> pi+ nu anti-nu at the CERN SPS
117777970
Study of jet structure in proton-proton collisions with large transverse momentum secondaries