Long-term forcing of the Sun’s coronal field, open flux, and cosmic ray modulation potential during grand minima, maxima, and regular activity phases by the solar dynamo mechanism

Abstract

ABSTRACT Magnetic fields generated in the Sun’s interior by the dynamo mechanism drive solar activity over a range of time-scales. Direct sunspot observations exist for a few centuries; reconstructed variations based on cosmogenic isotopes in the solar open flux and cosmic ray flux exist over thousands of years. While such reconstructions indicate the presence of extreme solar activity fluctuations in the past, causal links between millennia scale dynamo activity, consequent coronal field, solar wind, open flux and cosmic ray flux variations remain elusive; a lack of coronal field observations compounds this issue. By utilizing a stochastically forced solar dynamo model and potential field source surface extrapolation, we perform long-term simulations to illuminate how dynamo generated magnetic fields govern the structure of the solar corona and the state of the heliosphere – as indicated by variations in the open flux and cosmic ray modulation potential. We establish differences in the nature of the large-scale structuring of the solar corona during grand maximum, minimum, and regular solar activity phases and simulate how the open flux and cosmic ray modulation potential vary across these different phases of activity. We demonstrate that the power spectrum of simulated and observationally reconstructed solar open flux time series are consistent with each other. Our study provides the theoretical foundation for interpreting long-term solar cycle variations inferred from cosmogenic isotope based reconstructions and establishes causality between solar internal variations to the forcing of the state of the heliosphere.