A unified approach to the helioseismic inversion problem of the solar meridional flow from global oscillations

Abstract

Measurements from tracers and local helioseismology indicate the existence of a meridional flow in the Sun with strength in the order of 15ms-1 near the solar surface. Different attempts were made to obtain information on the flow profile at depths up to 20Mm below the solar surface. We propose a method using global helioseismic Doppler measurements with the prospect of inferring the meridional flow profile at greater depths. Our approach is based on the perturbation of the p-mode eigenfunctions of a solar model due to the presence of a flow. The distortion of the oscillation eigenfunctions is manifested in the mixing of p-modes, which may be measured from global solar oscillation time series. As a new helioseismic measurement quantity, we propose amplitude ratios between oscillations in the Fourier domain. We relate this quantity to the meridional flow and unify the concepts presented here for an inversion procedure to infer the meridional flow from global solar oscillations. © 2011. The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved.