Impact of Locally Suppressed Wave sources on helioseismic travel times

TL;DR

This study reveals that suppression of wave sources in sunspots significantly affects helioseismic travel-time measurements, potentially leading to misinterpretations of subsurface magnetic and flow structures.

Contribution

It demonstrates that source suppression contributes to travel-time shifts and influences helioseismic inferences, a factor previously underappreciated in sunspot analysis.

Findings

Suppression of wave sources causes measurable travel-time shifts.

Travel-time shifts can mimic effects of sound speed changes and flows.

Sensitivity to damping rates limits precise quantification.

Abstract

Wave travel-time shifts in the vicinity of sunspots are typically interpreted as arising predominantly from magnetic fields, flows, and local changes in sound speed. We show here that the suppression of granulation related wave sources in a sunspot can also contribute significantly to these travel-time shifts, and in some cases, an asymmetry between in and outgoing wave travel times. The tight connection between the physical interpretation of travel times and source-distribution homogeneity is confirmed. Statistically significant travel-time shifts are recovered upon numerically simulating wave propagation in the presence of a localized decrease in source strength. We also demonstrate that these time shifts are relatively sensitive to the modal damping rates; thus we are only able to place bounds on the magnitude of this effect. We see a systematic reduction of 10-15 seconds in $p$-mode mean travel times at short distances ($\sim 6.2$ Mm) that could be misinterpreted as arising from a shallow (thickness of 1.5 Mm) increase ($\sim$ 4%) in the sound speed. At larger travel distances ($\sim 24$ Mm) a 6-13 s difference between the ingoing and outgoing wave travel times is observed; this could mistakenly be interpreted as being caused by flows.