Modeling Global Magnetic-Flux Emergence in Bipolar Solar-Active Regions

Abstract

Active regions (ARs) appear in the solar atmosphere as a consequence of the emergence of magnetic-flux ropes (FR). In this study, we use Bayesian methods to analyze line-of-sight magnetograms of emerging ARs. We employ a FR model consisting of a half-torus field structure based on eight parameters. The goal is to derive constrained physical parameters of the originating FR that are consistent with the observations. Specifically, we aim to obtain a precise estimation of the AR tilt angle and magnetic twist at different stages of the emergence process. To achieve this, we propose four temporal methods that correlate the field-parameter evolutions with a single coherent FR. These methods differ from each other in the size of the explored parameter space. We test the methods on four bipolar ARs observed with the Michelson Doppler Imager on board the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory. We find that tilt angles are typically consistent between the temporal methods, improving previous estimations at all stages of the emergence. The twist sign derived from the temporal methods is consistent with previous estimations. The standard errors of all the methods used are similar, indicating that they model the observations equally well. These results indicate that the proposed methods can be used to obtain global magnetic parameters of ARs during their early evolution. The derived parameters contribute to a better understanding of the formation of FRs, and the role of ARs in the magnetic recycling process along the solar cycle.