Helicity Observations of Weak and Strong Fields
Helicity Observations of Weak and Strong Fields
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DOI:
10.1086/506560
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发表时间:
2006-06
期刊:
影响因子:
--
通讯作者:
Mei Zhang
中科院分区:
文献类型:
--
作者:
Mei Zhang
We report in this Letter our analysis of a large sample of photospheric vector magnetic field measurements. Our sample consists of 17,200 vector magnetograms obtained from 1997 January to 2004 August by the Huairou Solar Observing Station of the Chinese National Astronomical Observatory. Two physical quantities, α and current helicity, are calculated, and their signs and amplitudes are studied in a search for solar cycle variations. Differently from other studies of the same type, we calculate these quantities for weak (100 G 1000 G) fields separately. For weak fields, we find that the signs of both α and current helicity are consistent with the established hemispheric rule during most years of the solar cycle and that their magnitudes show a rough tendency of decreasing with the development of the solar cycle. The analysis of strong fields gives an interesting result: both α and current helicity present a sign opposite to that of weak fields. The implications of these observations for dynamo theory and helicity production are also briefly discussed.