Is there evidence for the existence of nonlinear behavior within the interplanetary solar sector structure?

Using data from the Sweden and Britain Radar Experiment (SABRE) VHF coherent radar, Yeoman et al. [1990] found evidence for two and four sector structures during the declining phase of solar cycle (SC) 21. No such obvious harmonic features were present during the ascending phase of SC 22. It was suggested that the structure of the heliospheric current sheet might exhibit nonlinear behavior during the latter period. A direct test of this suggestion, using established nonlinear methods, would require the computation of the fractal dimension of the data, for example. However, the quality of the SABRE data is insufficient for this purpose. Therefore we have tried to answer a simpler question: Is there any evidence that the SABRE data was generated by a (low‐dimensional) nonlinear process? If this were the case, it would be a powerful indicator of nonlinear behavior in the solar current sheet. Our approach has been to use a system of orthogonal linear filters to separate the data into linearly uncorrelated time series. We then look for nonlinear dynamical relationships between these time series, using radial basis function models (which can be thought of as a class of neural networks). The presence of such a relationship, indicated by the ability to model one filter output given another, would equate to the presence of nonlinear properties within the data. Using this technique, evidence is found for the presence of low‐level nonlinear behavior during both phases of the solar cycle investigated in this study. The evidence for nonlinear behavior is stronger during the descending phase of SC 21. However, it is not possible to distinguish between nonlinear dynamics and a nonlinearly transformed colored Gaussian noise process in either instance, using the available data. Therefore, in conclusion, we find insufficient evidence within the SABRE data set to support the suggestion of increased nonlinear dynamical behavior during the ascending phase of SC 22. In fact, nonlinear dynamics would seem to exert very little influence within the measurement time series at all, given the observed data. Therefore it is likely that stochastic or unresolved high‐dimensional nonlinear mechanisms are responsible for the observed spectrum complexity during the ascending phase of SC 22.