LSD and ZDM, an unhappy combination
If
one carries out a ZDM inversion according to the procedure
of Kochukhov et al. (2014) as applied to CU Virginis
"This new magnetic inversion approach relies on
the spectrum synthesis calculations over the full
wavelength range covered by observations and does
not assume that the LSD profiles behave as a single
spectral line with mean parameters."
and if you are reluctant to overlook details, you
may well find a perfect fit between the observed
phase-dependent mean profiles and the mean profiles
synthesised from the recovered abundance map; virtually all
the individual lines can however exhibit bad to very bad
fits.
In the example shown below I plot the differences
(normalised to the continuum) observed
minus predicted for 10 lines at 10 different
phases. These differences for individual lines can get as
large as 6% -- positive and negative -- whereas they are
about 10 times lower for the mean line (in red) for which
the rms scatter is better than 10^-3. It is clear that a
kind of compensation is at work to the detriment of the ZDM
afficionado.
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