Determining Solar Abundances Using Helioseismology

Abstract

The recent downward revision of solar photospheric abundances of oxygenand other heavy elements has resulted in serious discrepancies betweensolar models and solar structure as determined through helioseismology.In this work we investigate the possibility of determining the solarheavy-element abundance without reference to spectroscopy by usinghelioseismic data. Using the dimensionless sound-speed derivativein the solar convection zone, we find that the heavy-element abundanceZ = 0.0172 +/- 0.002, which is closer to the older, higher valueof the abundances.