# Properties of solar Rossby waves from normal mode coupling and characterizing its systematics

## TL;DR

This study analyzes 20 years of helioseismic data to characterize solar Rossby waves, revealing their properties and systematics, and introduces a novel method to address measurement challenges caused by spatial leakage.

## Contribution

A new approach is developed to mitigate spatial leakage effects in measuring solar Rossby waves from helioseismic data.

## Key findings

- Rossby-mode velocities are around 0.5 m/s at the surface.
- The method successfully separates harmonic degrees despite spatial leakage.
- Analysis of 20 years of data provides detailed Rossby wave properties.

## Abstract

Rossby waves play an important role in mediating the angular momentum of rotating spherical fluids, creating weather on Earth and tuning exoplanet orbits in distant stellar systems (Ogilvie 2014). Their recent discovery in the solar convection zone provides an exciting opportunity to appreciate the detailed astrophysics of Rossby waves. Large-scale Rossby waves create subtle drifts in acoustic oscillations in the convection zone, which we measure using helioseismology to image properties of Rossby waves in the interior. We analyze 20 years of space-based observations, from 1999 to 2018, to measure Rossby-mode frequencies, line-widths, and amplitudes. Spatial leakage affects the measurements of normal model coupling and complicates the analysis of separating out specific harmonic degree and the azimuthal number of features on the Sun. Here we demonstrate a novel approach to overcome this difficulty and test it by performing synthetic tests. We find that the root-mean-square velocity of the modes is of the order of 0.5 m/s at the surface.