Identification

Title

Limitations and biases in the retrieval of the polar magnetic field. I. The role of the magnetic filling factor in Milne-Eddington inversions of simulated hinode/SP data

Abstract

We study the extent to which Milne-Eddington inversions are able to retrieve and characterize the magnetic landscape of the solar poles from observations by the spectropolarimeter on board Hinode. In particular, we evaluate whether a variable magnetic filling factor is an adequate modeling technique for retrieving the intrinsic magnetic properties from every pixel in the polar field of view. We first generate synthetic spectra emerging from a numerical simulation of a "plage" region at an inclined line of sight of 65 DEG;, and degrade the data to emulate real observations. Then, we invert the synthetic spectra with two Milne-Eddington inversion codes that feature different treatments of the magnetic filling factor, and relate the retrieved magnetic quantities back to their original values in the simulation cube. We find that, while the apparent retrieved magnetic properties map the spatially degraded simulation well, the intrinsic magnetic quantities bear little relation to the magnetic field at the native resolution of the simulation. We discuss the systematic biases caused by line-of-sight foreshortening, spatial degradation, photon noise, and modeling assumptions embedded in the inversion algorithm.

Resource type

document

Resource locator

Unique resource identifier

code

https://n2t.org/ark:/85065/d7s75mcz

codeSpace

Dataset language

eng

Spatial reference system

code identifying the spatial reference system

Classification of spatial data and services

Topic category

geoscientificInformation

Keywords

Keyword set

keyword value

Text

originating controlled vocabulary

title

Resource Type

reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2016-01-01T00:00:00Z

Geographic location

West bounding longitude

East bounding longitude

North bounding latitude

South bounding latitude

Temporal reference

Temporal extent

Begin position

End position

Dataset reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2023-07-01T00:00:00Z

Frequency of update

Quality and validity

Lineage

Conformity

Data format

name of format

version of format

Constraints related to access and use

Constraint set

Use constraints

Limitations on public access

None

Responsible organisations

Responsible party

contact position

OpenSky Support

organisation name

UCAR/NCAR - Library

full postal address

PO Box 3000

Boulder

80307-3000

email address

opensky@ucar.edu

web address

http://opensky.ucar.edu/

name: homepage

responsible party role

pointOfContact

Metadata on metadata

Metadata point of contact