Seismology of solar oscillation line widths

Abstract

Recent measurements of line widths of solar p-modes are compared with damping rates computed under several different assumptions. There is reasonable agreement with a calculation taking some account of perturbations in the convective fluxes induced by the oscillations, whereas calculations neglecting these flux perturbations are further from the observations. This opens up the prospect of using observations of solar oscillations to test theories of time-dependent convection. The results should be of importance to studies of other types of pulsating stars.