The North–South Asymmetry of Sunspot Relative Numbers Based on Complex Network Technique

Abstract

Solar magnetic activity exhibits a complex nonlinear behavior, but its dynamic process has not been fully understood. As the complex network technique can better capture the dynamics of nonlinear system, the visibility graphs (VG), the horizontal visibility graphs (HVG), and the limited penetrable visibility graphs (LPVG) are applied to implement the mapping of sunspot relative numbers in the northern and southern hemispheres. The results show that these three methods can capture important information of nonlinear dynamics existing in the long-term hemispheric sunspot activity. In the presentation of the results, the network degree sequence of the HVG method changes preferentially to the original data series as well as the VG and the LPVG, while both the VG and the LPVG slightly lag behind the original time series, which provides some new ideas for the nonlinear dynamics of the hemispheric asymmetry in the two hemispheres. Meanwhile, the use of statistical feature-skewness values and complex network visibility graphs can yield some complementary information for mutual verification.

Keywords

• solar activity
• hemispheric asymmetry
• sunspot numbers
• complex networks