Cycles and universality in sunspot numbers _fluctuations

Abstract

We analyze the famous Wolf's sunspot numbers. Surprisingly, we discovered that the distribution of the sunspot number fluctuations for both the ascending and descending phases is close to the universal nonparametric Bramwell-Holdsworth-Pinton (BHP) distribution. Since the BHP probability density function appears in several other physical phenomena, our result reveals a universal feature of the Wolf's sunspot numbers.