THE SOLAR WIND AND INTERPLANETARY FIELD DURING VERY LOW AMPLITUDE SUNSPOT CYCLES

Cosmogenic isotope records indicate that a solar-cycle modulation persists through extended periods of very low sunspot activity. One immediate implication is that the photospheric field during such grand minima did not consist entirely of ephemeral regions, which produce a negligible amount of open magnetic flux, but continued to have a large-scale component originating from active regions. Present-day solar and heliospheric observations show that the solar wind mass flux and proton density at the coronal base scale almost linearly with the footpoint field strength, whereas the wind speed at Earth is uncorrelated with the latter. Thus a factor of similar to 4-7 reduction in the total open flux, as deduced from reconstructions of the interplanetary magnetic field (IMF) during the Maunder Minimum, would lead to a similar decrease in the solar wind densities, while leaving the wind speeds largely unchanged. We also demonstrate that a decrease in the strengths of the largest active regions during grand minima will reduce the amplitude of the Sun's equatorial dipole relative to the axial component, causing the IMF strength to peak near sunspot minimum rather than near sunspot maximum, a result that is consistent with the phase shift observed in the Be-10 record during the Maunder Minimum. Finally, we discuss the origin of the 5 yr periodicity sometimes present in the cosmogenic isotope data during low and medium amplitude cycles.