Zeeman Doppler maps: the true and the spurious

TL;DR

This paper critically examines the reliability of Zeeman Doppler mapping (ZDM) in accurately depicting magnetic and abundance structures in ApBp stars, highlighting potential spurious results and the challenges in recovering true stellar surface features.

Contribution

It reveals that many published ZDM maps may be spurious due to neglecting magnetic fields or noise, and discusses the difficulties in accurately reconstructing complex abundance structures.

Findings

Many published maps are spurious due to neglect of magnetic fields or noise.

High signal-to-noise spectra do not guarantee accurate abundance maps.

Reconstructing true abundance structures from ZDM is highly challenging.

Abstract

Numerical models of atomic diffusion in magnetic atmospheres of ApBp stars predict abundance structures that differ from the empirical abundance maps derived with (Zeeman) Doppler mapping (ZDM). Whereas both equilibrium abundance stratification calculations and stationary solutions to the time-dependent diffusion equations predict (warped) rings about the magnetic equator in dipole-like magnetic geometries, spot-like structures dominate published maps. An in-depth analysis of this apparent disagreement investigates the detectability by means of ZDM of a variety of abundance structures, including (warped) rings predicted by theory, but also some complex spot-like structures. As it turns out, a number of published maps have to be considered spurious either because strong magnetic fields have been neglected or because they are based on spectra where photon noise dominates over the signal of the alleged abundance structures. Even when spectra of high signal to noise ratio are available, it can prove altogether impossible to correctly recover shapes, positions and abundances of a mere handful of spots, even using all 4 Stokes parameters and knowing the field geometry, the recovery of (warped) rings can be equally challenging. Inversions -- based on just one or two spectral lines -- of complex abundance maps usually admit of multiple solutions. It turns out that there is no guarantee that a properly chosen regularisation function will lead to the true abundance map. Attention is drawn to the need for a study that would elucidate the relation between the stratified, field-dependent abundance structures predicted by diffusion theory and empirical maps obtained by means of "canonical" ZDM, i.e. with mean atmospheres and unstratified abundances. Finally we point out difficulties arising from the 3D nature of the atomic diffusion process in magnetic ApBp star atmospheres.