Determining the electric field (E-field) distribution on the Suns photosphere is essential for quantitative studies of how energy flows from the Suns photosphere, through the corona, and into the heliosphere. This E-field also provides valuable input
for data-driven models of the solar atmosphere and the Sun-Earth system. We show how Faradays Law can be used with observed vector magnetogram time series to estimate the photospheric E-field, an ill-posed inversion problem. Our method uses a poloidal-toroidal decomposition (PTD) of the time derivative of the vector magnetic field. The PTD solutions are not unique; the gradient of a scalar potential can be added to the PTD E-field without affecting consistency with Faradays Law. We present an iterative technique to determine a potential function consistent with ideal MHD evolution; but this E-field is also not a unique solution to Faradays Law. Finally, we explore a variational approach that minimizes an energy functional to determine a unique E-field, similar to Longcopes Minimum Energy Fit. The PTD technique, the iterative technique, and the variational technique are used to estimate E-fields from a pair of synthetic vector magnetograms taken from an MHD simulation; and these E-fields are compared with the simulations known electric fields. These three techniques are then applied to a pair of vector magnetograms of solar active region NOAA AR8210, to demonstrate the methods with real data.
