The Sun’s Mean Line-of-sight Field

Abstract

In this paper, I regard the Sun-as-a-star magnetic field (i.e., the mean field) as a filter for the spherical harmonic components of the photospheric field, and then calculate the transmission coefficients of this filter. The coefficients for each harmonic, Y l m , are listed in three tables according to their dependence on B 0, the observer’s latitude in the star’s polar coordinate system. These coefficients are used to interpret the 46 yr sequence of daily mean-field measurements at the Wilcox Solar Observatory. I find that the nonaxisymmetric part of the field originates in the , , and a combination of the and harmonic components. The axisymmetric part of the field originates in plus a B 0-dependent combination of the and components. The power spectrum of the field has peaks at frequencies corresponding to the ∼27 day synodic equatorial rotation period and its second and third harmonics. Each of these peaks has fine structure on its low-frequency side, indicating magnetic patterns that rotate slowly under the influence of differential rotation and meridional flow. The sidebands of the fundamental mode resolve into peaks corresponding to periods of ∼28.5 and ∼30 days, which tend to occur at the start of sunspot maximum, whereas the ∼27 day period tends to occur toward the end of sunspot maximum. We might expect similar rotational sidebands to occur in magnetic observations of other Sun-like stars and to be a useful complement to asteroseismology studies of convection and magnetic fields in those stars.