Fragile detection of solar g modes by Fossat et al

TL;DR

This paper critically examines the claimed detection of solar gravity modes by Fossat et al. 2017, revealing that the detection is highly sensitive to parameter choices and thus likely unreliable.

Contribution

The study tests the robustness of Fossat et al.'s solar g-mode detection method, highlighting its extreme fragility to parameter adjustments.

Findings

Detection vanishes with slight adjustments to start time

Results are highly sensitive to parameter choices

The claimed gravity mode detection is likely unreliable

Abstract

The internal gravity modes of the Sun are notoriously difficult to detect, and the claimed detection of gravity modes presented in Fossat et al. 2017 is thus very exciting. Given the importance of these modes for understanding solar structure and dynamics, the results must be robust. While Fossat et al. 2017 described their method and parameter choices in detail, the sensitivity of their results to several parameters were not presented. Therefore, we test the sensitivity to a selection of them. The most concerning result is that the detection vanishes when we adjust the start time of the 16.5 year velocity time series by a few hours. We conclude that this reported detection of gravity modes is extremely fragile and should be treated with utmost caution.