arXiv subjects

A. Asensio Ramos

Publications and source records attributed to A. Asensio Ramos.

At least 145 records · Page 8Linked to original sources

arXiv2009

Multiline Zeeman Signatures Through Line Addition

In order to get a significant Zeeman signature in the polarised spectra of a magnetic star, we usually 'add' the contributions of numerous spectral lines; the ultimate goal is to recover the spectropolarimetric prints of the magnetic field in these line additions. Here we want to clarify the meaning of these techniques of line addition; in particular, we try to interpret the meaning of the 'pseudo-line' formed during this process and to find out why and how its Zeeman signature is still meaningful. We create a synthetic case of line addition and apply well tested standard solar methods routinely used in the research on magnetism in our nearest star. The results are convincing and the Zeeman signatures well detected; Solar methods are found to be quite efficient also for stellar observations. We statistically compare line addition with least-squares deconvolution and demonstrate that they both give very similar results as a consequence of the special statistical properties of the weights. The Zeeman signatures are unequivocally detected in this multiline approach. We may anticipate the outcome that magnetic field detection is reliable well beyond the weak-field approximation. Linear polarisation in the spectra of solar type stars can be detected when the spectral resolution is sufficiently high.

astro-ph.SR↗

arXiv2009

Evidence for Quasi-isotropic Magnetic Fields from Hinode Quiet Sun Observations

Some recent investigations of spectropolarimetric observations of the Zeeman effect in the Fe I lines at 630 nm carried out with the Hinode solar space telescope have concluded that the strength of the magnetic field vector in the internetwork regions of the quiet Sun is in the hG regime and that its inclination is predominantly horizontal. We critically reconsider the analysis of such observations and carry out a complete Bayesian analysis with the aim of extracting as much information as possible from them, including error bars. We apply the recently developed BayesME code that carries out a complete Bayesian inference for Milne-Eddington atmospheres. The sampling of the posterior distribution function is obtained with a Markov Chain Monte Carlo scheme and the marginal distributions are analyzed in detail. The Kullback-Leibler divergence is used to study the extent to which the observations introduce new information in the inference process resulting in sufficiently constrained parameters. Our analysis clearly shows that only upper limits to the magnetic field strength can be inferred with fields in the kG regime completely discarded. Furthermore, the noise level present in the analyzed Hinode observations induces a substantial loss of information for constraining the azimuth of the magnetic field. Concerning the inclination of the field, we demonstrate that some information is available to constrain it for those pixels with the largest polarimetric signal. The results also point out that the field in pixels with small polarimetric signals can be nicely reproduced in terms of a quasi-isotropic distribution.

astro-ph.SR↗

arXiv2009

BayesCLUMPY: Bayesian Inference with Clumpy Dusty Torus Models

Our aim is to present a fast and general Bayesian inference framework based on the synergy between machine learning techniques and standard sampling methods and apply it to infer the physical properties of clumpy dusty torus using infrared photometric high spatial resolution observations of active galactic nuclei. We make use of the Metropolis-Hastings Markov Chain Monte Carlo algorithm for sampling the posterior distribution function. Such distribution results from combining all a-priori knowledge about the parameters of the model and the information introduced by the observations. The main difficulty resides in the fact that the model used to explain the observations is computationally demanding and the sampling is very time consuming. For this reason, we apply a set of artificial neural networks that are used to approximate and interpolate a database of models. As a consequence, models not present in the original database can be computed ensuring continuity. We focus on the application of this solution scheme to the recently developed public database of clumpy dusty torus models. The machine learning scheme used in this paper allows us to generate any model from the database using only a factor 10^-4 of the original size of the database and a factor 10^-3 in computing time. The posterior distribution obtained for each model parameter allows us to investigate how the observations constrain the parameters and which ones remain partially or completely undetermined, providing statistically relevant confidence intervals. As an example, the application to the nuclear region of Centaurus A shows that the optical depth of the clouds, the total number of clouds and the radial extent of the cloud distribution zone are well constrained using only 6 filters.

astro-ph.IM↗

arXiv2009

The Magnetic Field of Solar Spicules

Determining the magnetic field of solar spicules is vital for developing adequate models of these plasma jets, which are thought to play a key role in the thermal, dynamic, and magnetic structure of the chromosphere. Here we report on magnetic spicule properties in a very quiet region of the off-limb solar atmosphere, as inferred from new spectropolarimetric observations in the HeI 10830 A triplet. We have used a novel inversion code for Stokes profiles caused by the joint action of atomic level polarization and the Hanle and Zeeman effects (HAZEL) to interpret the observations. Magnetic fields as strong as 40G were unambiguously detected in a very localized area of the slit, which may represent a possible lower value of the field strength of organized network spicules.

astro-ph.SR↗

arXiv2008

Error propagation in polarimetric demodulation

The polarization analysis of the light is typically carried out using modulation schemes. The light of unknown polarization state is passed through a set of known modulation optics and a detector is used to measure the total intensity passing the system. The modulation optics is modified several times and, with the aid of such several measurements, the unknown polarization state of the light can be inferred. How to find the optimal demodulation process has been investigated in the past. However, since the modulation matrix has to be measured for a given instrument and the optical elements can present problems of repeatability, some uncertainty is present in the elements of the modulation matrix and/or covariances between these elements. We analyze in detail this issue, presenting analytical formulae for calculating the covariance matrix produced by the propagation of such uncertainties on the demodulation matrix, on the inferred Stokes parameters and on the efficiency of the modulation process. We demonstrate that, even if the covariance matrix of the modulation matrix is diagonal, the covariance matrix of the demodulation matrix is, in general, non-diagonal because matrix inversion is a nonlinear operation. This propagates through the demodulation process and induces correlations on the inferred Stokes parameters.

astro-ph↗

arXiv2008

PCA detection and denoising of Zeeman signatures in stellar polarised spectra

Our main objective is to develop a denoising strategy to increase the signal to noise ratio of individual spectral lines of stellar spectropolarimetric observations. We use a multivariate statistics technique called Principal Component Analysis. The cross-product matrix of the observations is diagonalized to obtain the eigenvectors in which the original observations can be developed. This basis is such that the first eigenvectors contain the greatest variance. Assuming that the noise is uncorrelated a denoising is possible by reconstructing the data with a truncated basis. We propose a method to identify the number of eigenvectors for an efficient noise filtering. Numerical simulations are used to demonstrate that an important increase of the signal to noise ratio per spectral line is possible using PCA denoising techniques. It can be also applied for detection of magnetic fields in stellar atmospheres. We analyze the relation between PCA and commonly used well-known techniques like line addition and least-squares deconvolution. Moreover, PCA is very robust and easy to compute.

astro-ph↗

arXiv2008

Advanced Forward Modeling and Inversion of Stokes Profiles Resulting from the Joint Action of the Hanle and Zeeman Effects

A big challenge in solar and stellar physics in the coming years will be to decipher the magnetism of the solar outer atmosphere (chromosphere and corona) along with its dynamic coupling with the magnetic fields of the underlying photosphere. To this end, it is important to develop rigorous diagnostic tools for the physical interpretation of spectropolarimetric observations in suitably chosen spectral lines. Here we present a computer program for the synthesis and inversion of Stokes profiles caused by the joint action of atomic level polarization and the Hanle and Zeeman effects in some spectral lines of diagnostic interest, such as those of the He I 10830 A and D_3 multiplets. It is based on the quantum theory of spectral line polarization, which takes into account all the relevant physical mechanisms and ingredients (optical pumping, atomic level polarization, Zeeman, Paschen-Back and Hanle effects). The influence of radiative transfer on the emergent spectral line radiation is taken into account through a suitable slab model. The user can either calculate the emergent intensity and polarization for any given magnetic field vector or infer the dynamical and magnetic properties from the observed Stokes profiles via an efficient inversion algorithm based on global optimization methods. The reliability of the forward modeling and inversion code presented here is demonstrated through several applications, which range from the inference of the magnetic field vector in solar active regions to determining whether or not it is canopy-like in quiet chromospheric regions. This user-friendly diagnostic tool called "HAZEL" (from HAnle and ZEeman Light) is offered to the astrophysical community, with the hope that it will facilitate new advances in solar and stellar physics.

astro-ph↗

arXiv2007

Near-IR internetwork spectro-polarimetry at different heliocentric angles

The analysis of near infrared spectropolarimetric data at the internetwork at different regions on the solar surface could offer constraints to reject current modeling of these quiet areas. We present spectro-polarimetric observations of very quiet regions for different values of the heliocentric angle for the Fe I lines at 1.56 micron, from disc centre to positions close to the limb. The spatial resolution of the data is 0.7-1". We analyze direct observable properties of the Stokes profiles as the amplitude of circular and linear polarization as well as the total degree of polarization. Also the area and amplitude asymmetries are studied. We do not find any significant variation of the properties of the polarimetric signals with the heliocentric angle. This means that the magnetism of the solar internetwork remains the same regardless of the position on the solar disc. This observational fact discards the possibility of modeling the internetwork as a Network-like scenario. The magnetic elements of internetwork areas seem to be isotropically distributed when observed at our spatial resolution.

astro-ph↗

arXiv2007

Multi-Line Quiet Sun Spectro-Polarimetry at 5250 and 6302 Å

The reliability of quiet Sun magnetic field diagnostics based on the \ion{Fe}{1} lines at 6302 Åhas been questioned by recent work. We present here the results of a thorough study of high-resolution multi-line observations taken with the new spectro-polarimeter SPINOR, comprising the 5250 and 6302 Åspectral domains. The observations were analyzed using several inversion algorithms, including Milne-Eddington, LTE with 1 and 2 components, and MISMA codes. We find that the line-ratio technique applied to the 5250 Ålines is not sufficiently reliable to provide a direct magnetic diagnostic in the presence of thermal fluctuations and variable line broadening. In general, one needs to resort to inversion algorithms, ideally with realistic magneto-hydrodynamical constrains. When this is done, the 5250 Ålines do not seem to provide any significant advantage over those at 6302 Å. In fact, our results point towards a better performance with the latter (in the presence of turbulent line broadening). In any case, for very weak flux concentrations, neither spectral region alone provides sufficient constraints to fully disentangle the intrinsic field strengths. Instead, we advocate for a combined analysis of both spectral ranges, which yields a better determination of the quiet Sun magnetic properties. Finally, we propose the use of two other \ion{Fe}{1} lines (at 4122 and 9000 Å) with identical line opacities that seem to work much better than the others.

astro-ph↗

arXiv2007

Bayesian Inversion of Stokes Profiles

[abridged] Inversion techniques are the most powerful methods to obtain information about the thermodynamical and magnetic properties of solar and stellar atmospheres. In the last years, we have witnessed the development of highly sophisticated inversion codes that are now widely applied to spectro-polarimetric observations. The majority of these inversion codes are based on the optimization of a complicated non-linear merit function. However, no reliable and statistically well-defined confidence intervals can be obtained for the parameters inferred from the inversions. A correct estimation of the confidence intervals for all the parameters that describe the model is mandatory. Additionally, it is fundamental to apply efficient techniques to assess the ability of models to reproduce the observations and to what extent the models have to be refined or can be simplified. Bayesian techniques are applied to analyze the performance of the model to fit a given observed Stokes vector. The posterior distribution, is efficiently sampled using a Markov Chain Monte Carlo method. For simplicity, we focus on the Milne-Eddington approximate solution of the radiative transfer equation and we only take into account the generation of polarization through the Zeeman effect. However, the method is extremely general and other more complex forward models can be applied. We illustrate the ability of the method with the aid of academic and realistic examples. We show that the information provided by the posterior distribution turns out to be fundamental to understand and determine the amount of information available in the Stokes profiles in these particular cases.

astro-ph↗

arXiv2007

Extreme Value Theory and the Solar Cycle

We investigate the statistical properties of the extreme events of the solar cycle as measured by the sunspot number. The recent advances in the methodology of the theory of extreme values is applied to the maximal extremes of the time series of sunspots. We focus on the extreme events that exceed a carefully chosen threshold and a generalized Pareto distribution is fitted to the tail of the empirical cumulative distribution. A maximum likelihood method is used to estimate the parameters of the generalized Pareto distribution and confidence levels are also given to the parameters. Due to the lack of an automatic procedure for selecting the threshold, we analyze the sensitivity of the fitted generalized Pareto distribution to the exact value of the threshold. According to the available data, that only spans the previous ~250 years, the cumulative distribution of the time series is bounded, yielding an upper limit of 324 for the sunspot number. We also estimate that the return value for each solar cycle is ~188, while the return value for a century increases to ~228. Finally, the results also indicate that the most probable return time for a large event like the maximum at solar cycle 19 happens once every ~700 years and that the probability of finding such a large event with a frequency smaller than ~50 years is very small. In spite of the essentially extrapolative character of these results, their statistical significance is very large.

astro-ph↗

arXiv2007

A User-Friendly Code to Diagnose Chromospheric Plasmas

The physical interpretation of spectropolarimetric observations of lines of neutral helium, such as those of the 10830 A multiplet, represents an excellent opportunity for investigating the magnetism of plasma structures in the solar chromosphere. Here we present a powerful forward modeling and inversion code that permits either to calculate the emergent intensity and polarization for any given magnetic field vector or to infer the dynamical and magnetic properties from the observed Stokes profiles. This diagnostic tool is based on the quantum theory of spectral line polarization, which self-consistently accounts for the Hanle and Zeeman effects in the most general case of the incomplete Paschen-Back effect regime. We also take into account radiative transfer effects. An efficient numerical scheme based on global optimization methods has been applied. Our Stokes inversion code permits a fast and reliable determination of the global minimum.

astro-ph↗

arXiv2007

The intrinsic dimensionality of spectro-polarimetric data

The amount of information available in spectro-polarimetric data is estimated. To this end, the intrinsic dimensionality of the data is inferred with the aid of a recently derived estimator based on nearest-neighbor considerations and obtained applying the principle of maximum likelihood. We show in detail that the estimator correctly captures the intrinsic dimension of artificial datasets with known dimension. The effect of noise in the estimated dimension is analyzed thoroughly and we conclude that it introduces a positive bias that needs to be accounted for. Real simultaneous spectro-polarimetric observations in the visible 630 nm and the near-infrared 1.5 microns spectral regions are also investigated in detail, showing that the near-infrared dataset provides more information of the physical conditions in the solar atmosphere than the visible dataset. Finally, we demonstrate that the amount of information present in an observed dataset is a monotonically increasing function of the number of available spectral lines.

astro-ph↗

arXiv2006

The Hanle Effect in Atomic and Molecular Lines: A New Look at the Sun's Hidden Magnetism

This paper reviews some of the most recent advances in the application of the Hanle effect to solar physics, and how these developments are allowing us to explore the magnetism of the photospheric regions that look ``empty'' in solar magnetograms--that is, the Sun's ``hidden'' magnetism. In particular, we show how a joint analysis of the Hanle effect in atomic and molecular lines indicates that there is a vast amount of hidden magnetic energy and unsigned magnetic flux localized in the (intergranular) downflowing regions of the quiet solar photosphere, carried mainly by tangled fields at sub-resolution scales with strengths between the equipartition field values and 1 kG.

astro-ph↗

arXiv2006

A Synthetic Stellar Polarization Atlas from 400 to 1000 nm

% context heading (optional) {With the development of new polarimeters for large telescopes, the spectro-polarimetric study of astrophysical bodies is becoming feasible and, indeed, more frequent. In particular, this is permitting the observational study of stellar magnetic fields} % aims heading (mandatory) {With the aim to optimize and interpret this kind of observations, we have produced a spectral atlas of circular polarization in a grid of stellar atmospheric models with effective temperatures between 3500 and 10000 K, surface gravities $\log(g)=3.5-5$, metallicities between 10$^{-2}$ and 1, and magnetic field strengths of 100, 1000 and 5000~G} % methods heading (mandatory) {We have computed the emergent Stokes $I$ and $V$ flux spectra in LTE of more than 10$^5$ spectral lines} % results heading (mandatory) {The atlas and several numerical tools are available in electronic format and may be downloaded from http://download.hao.ucar.edu/pub/PSA/. In this paper we review and discuss some of its most relevant features, such as which spectral regions and individual lines harbor the strongest signals, what are interesting lines to observe, how to disentangle field strength from filling factor, etc.}

astro-ph↗

arXiv2006

A near-IR line of Mn I as a diagnostic tool of the average magnetic energy in the solar photosphere

We report on spectropolarimetric observations of a near-IR line of Mn I located at 15262.702 A whose intensity and polarization profiles are very sensitive to the presence of hyperfine structure. A theoretical investigation of the magnetic sensitivity of this line to the magnetic field uncovers several interesting properties. The most important one is that the presence of strong Paschen-Back perturbations due to the hyperfine structure produces an intensity line profile whose shape changes according to the absolute value of the magnetic field strength. A line ratio technique is developed from the intrinsic variations of the line profile. This line ratio technique is applied to spectropolarimetric observations of the quiet solar photosphere in order to explore the probability distribution function of the magnetic field strength. Particular attention is given to the quietest area of the observed field of view, which was encircled by an enhanced network region. A detailed theoretical investigation shows that the inferred distribution yields information on the average magnetic field strength and the spatial scale at which the magnetic field is organized. A first estimation gives ~250 G for the mean field strength and a tentative value of ~0.45" for the spatial scale at which the observed magnetic field is horizontally organized.

astro-ph↗

arXiv2006

Influence of atomic polarization and horizontal illumination on the Stokes profiles of the He I 10830 multiplet

The polarization observed in the spectral lines of the He I 10830 multiplet carries valuable information on the dynamical and magnetic properties of plasma structures in the solar chromosphere and corona, such as spicules, prominences, filaments, emerging magnetic flux regions, etc. Here we investigate the influence of atomic level polarization on the emergent Stokes profiles for a broad range of magnetic field strengths, in both 90 degree and forward scattering geometry. We show that, contrary to a widespread belief, the selective emission and absorption processes caused by the presence of atomic level polarization may have an important influence on the emergent linear polarization, even for magnetic field strengths as large as 1000 G. Consequently, the modeling of the Stokes Q and U profiles should not be done by taking only into account the contribution of the transverse Zeeman effect within the framework of the Paschen-Back effect theory, unless the magnetic field intensity of the observed plasma structure is sensibly larger than 1000 G. We point out also that in low-lying optically thick plasma structures, such as those of active region filaments, the (horizontal) radiation field generated by the structure itself may substantially reduce the positive contribution to the anisotropy factor caused by the (vertical) radiation field coming from the underlying solar photosphere, so that the amount of atomic level polarization may turn out to be negligible. Only under such circumstances may the emergent linear polarization of the He I 10830 multiplet in such regions of the solar atmosphere be dominated by the contribution caused by the transverse Zeeman effect.

astro-ph↗

arXiv2006

The Minimum Description Length Principle and Model Selection in Spectropolarimetry

It is shown that the two-part Minimum Description Length Principle can be used to discriminate among different models that can explain a given observed dataset. The description length is chosen to be the sum of the lengths of the message needed to encode the model plus the message needed to encode the data when the model is applied to the dataset. It is verified that the proposed principle can efficiently distinguish the model that correctly fits the observations while avoiding over-fitting. The capabilities of this criterion are shown in two simple problems for the analysis of observed spectropolarimetric signals. The first is the de-noising of observations with the aid of the PCA technique. The second is the selection of the optimal number of parameters in LTE inversions. We propose this criterion as a quantitative approach for distinguising the most plausible model among a set of proposed models. This quantity is very easy to implement as an additional output on the existing inversion codes.

astro-ph↗