The team seeks to:

  • Explain how flux emerges through the outer convection zone of a star like the Sun to form a typical AR
  • Characterize the properties and patterns of flux emergence related to internal processes
  • Understand surface flux transport and the relationship of interior and exterior flows
  • Work with other teams to determine how photospheric flux interacts with the interior and relates to the next solar cycle.

Team members will use deep learning techniques to integrate the SDO and SOHO eras into a single homogeneous data series spanning 25 years, make detailed measurements of the near-surface flows and flow patterns, characterize the properties of ARs and large-scale flux patterns, and develop an emerging-flux model that penetrates deep enough to see how dynamo-generated flux becomes buoyant and how properties of flux concentrations change during the rise to the near surface.

Initial activities:

  • Characterize properties of active regions and patterns of flux emergence in Cycle 24 and before.
  • Measure variable photospheric flow patterns and connect them to the results of the Helioseismology Team.
  • Relate the polar field to active region emergence, large-scale flows, and cross-equatorial flux transport in Cycle 24.
  • Update a coupled model of flux emergence through the outer convection zone and implement new features.
  • Track the evolution of helicity through Cycle 24.

Team Members

The following people are currently on the Surface Links Team:

Aimee Norton Alex Mendez Alexei Pevtsov Alyssa Russell Andrés Muñoz-Jaramillo Benoit Tremblay Bibhuti Kumar Jha Bidya Binay Karak Bill Abbett - Barista Bryce Cannon Catherine Blume David Bercik Irina N. Kitiashvili Isaac Asante Junwei Zhao Keiji Hayashi Kiran Jain Lisa Upton Luca Bertello Marc DeRosa Maria Kazachenko Martine Chane-Yook Mausumi Dikpati Michael Prazak Peter Levens Phil Scherrer Piyush Agrawal Raphael Attie Roger Ulrich Rudi Komm Sampoorna M. Sung-Hong Park Sushant Mahajan Sushanta Tripathy Tamar Ervin Thierry Roudier Tim Larson J. Todd Hoeksema - Barista Viacheslav (Slava) Sadykov Xudong Sun Yang Liu