The initial success of the Rigidly Rotating Magnetosphere ( RRM ) model application to the B2Vp star \sigma  Ori E by Townsend , Owocki & Groote ( 42 ) triggered a renewed era of observational monitoring of this archetypal object .
We utilize high-resolution spectropolarimetry and the magnetic Doppler imaging ( MDI ) technique to simultaneously determine the magnetic configuration , which is predominately dipolar , with a polar strength B _ { d } = 7.3 - 7.8 kG and a smaller non-axisymmetric quadrupolar contribution , as well as the surface distribution of abundance of He , Fe , C , and Si .
We describe a revised RRM model that now accepts an arbitrary surface magnetic field configuration , with the field topology from the MDI models used as input .
The resulting synthetic H \alpha emission and broadband photometric observations generally agree with observations , however , several features are poorly fit .
To explore the possibility of a photospheric contribution to the observed photometric variability , the MDI abundance maps were used to compute a synthetic photospheric light curve to determine the effect of the surface inhomogeneities .
Including the computed photospheric brightness modulation fails to improve the agreement between the observed and computed photometry .
We conclude that the discrepancies can not be explained as an effect of inhomogeneous surface abundance .
Analysis of the UV light variability shows good agreement between observed variability and computed light curves , supporting the accuracy of the photospheric light variation calculation .
We thus conclude that significant additional physics is necessary for the RRM model to acceptably reproduce observations of not only \sigma  Ori E , but also other similar stars with significant stellar wind-magnetic field interactions .