Solar pulsational stability-III. acoustical excitation by turbulent convection

Abstract

Current opinion presumes that solar five-minute oscillations are intrinsically damped and excited as a consequence of the emission of acoustical radiation by turbulent convective flows. Prescriptions modelling this process are employed to estimate modal mean amplitudes. The resulting oscillation power spectra can be made to agree with observation by adjusting various theoretical parameters. Whilst this ruins the predictive power of the theory, it does demonstrate that the hypothesis of stochastic excitation is plausible. Uncertainties in the theory are shown to have substantial repercussions on the mean amplitudes.