Energy Bounds from Relative Magnetic Helicity in Spherical Shells

Abstract Relative magnetic helicity is commonly used in solar physics to avoid the well-known gauge ambiguity of standard magnetic helicity in magnetically open domains. However, its physical interpretation is challenging, owing to the invocation of a reference field. For the specific case of spherical-shell domains (with potential reference field), relative helicity may be written intrinsically in terms of the magnetic field alone, without the need to calculate the reference field or its vector potential. We use this intrinsic expression to prove that nonzero relative helicity implies lower bounds for both magnetic energy and free magnetic energy, generalizing the important Arnol’d inequality known for closed-field magnetic helicity. Further, we derive a stronger energy bound by spatially decomposing the relative helicity over a magnetic partition of the domain to obtain a new ideal invariant, which we call unsigned helicity. The bounds are illustrated with analytical linear force-free fields (that maximize relative helicity for given boundary conditions) as well as a nonpotential data-driven model of the solar corona. These bounds confirm that both relative helicity and the unsigned helicity can influence the dynamics in the solar corona.