On the role of magnetic fields in abundance determinations

Abstract

{Although there is considerable evidence supporting an ubiquitous magnetic field in solar/stellar photospheres, its impact in the determination of abundances has never been quantified. In this work we investigate whether the magnetic field plays a measurable role for this kind of studies. To that end, we carry out simulations of spectral line formation in the presence of a magnetic field, and then use those profiles to derive the abundance of several atomic species (Fe, Si, C and O) neglecting the magnetic field. In this way, we find that the derived iron abundance can be significantly biased, with systematic errors up to 0.1 dex. In the case of silicon, carbon and oxygen their role is very marginal (errors smaller than 0.02 dex). We also find that the effect of the magnetic field strongly depends on its inclination with respect to the observer. We show that fields that are aligned with the observer lead to an underestimation of the real abundance, whereas more inclined ones overestimate it. In the case of a mixture of fields with different inclinations these effects are likely to partly cancel each other out, making the role of the magnetic field even less important. Finally, we derive a simple model that can be used to determine the suitability of a spectral line when we wish to avoid the bias introduced by the neglect of the magnetic field.