Dynamics of the photosphere along the solar cycle from SDO/HMI

TL;DR

This study analyzes six years of SDO/HMI data to examine how photospheric flow properties and magnetic fields vary during the solar cycle, finding stability in flow and magnetic features at disk center.

Contribution

It provides the first detailed analysis of the stability of photospheric flow and magnetic field properties over the solar cycle at disk center using high-resolution SDO/HMI data.

Findings

Flow properties remain stable across the solar cycle.

Magnetic field and continuum contrast show no significant variation.

Horizontal velocities at meso- and supergranular scales are consistent over time.

Abstract

As the global magnetic field of the Sun has an activity cycle, one expects to observe some variation of the dynamical properties of the flows visible in the photosphere. We investigate the flow field during the solar cycle by analysing SDO/HMI observations of continuum intensity, Doppler velocity and longitudinal magnetic field. We first picked data at disk center during 6 years along the solar cycle with a 48-hour time step in order to study the overall evolution of the continuum intensity and magnetic field. Then we focused on thirty 6-hour sequences of quiet regions without any remnant of magnetic activity separated by 6 months, in summer and winter, when disk center latitude B0 is close to zero. The horizontal velocity was derived from the local correlation tracking technique over a field of view of 216.4Mm x 216.4Mm located at disk center. Our measurements at disk center show the stability of the flow properties between meso- and supergranular scales along the solar cycle. The network magnetic field, produced locally at disk center independently from large scale dynamo, together with continuum contrast, vertical and horizontal flows, seem to remain constant during the solar cycle.