Validating inversions for toroidal flows using normal-mode coupling

TL;DR

This paper validates an inversion algorithm for helioseismic normal-mode coupling to accurately infer the Sun's interior toroidal flows, emphasizing the importance of model assumptions and addressing mode leakage effects.

Contribution

It introduces a validation framework for the inversion technique using synthetic data, highlighting the impact of model assumptions and mode leakage mitigation.

Findings

Inversion accuracy depends on flow model assumptions.

Mitigation of mode leakage improves inversion results.

Synthetic tests confirm the method's potential and limitations.

Abstract

Normal-mode coupling is a helioseismic technique that uses measurements of mode eigenfunctions to infer the interior structure of the Sun. This technique has led to insights into the evolution and structure of toroidal flows in the solar interior. Here, we validate an inversion algorithm for normal-mode coupling by generating synthetic seismic measurements associated with input flows and comparing the input and inverted velocities. We study four different cases of input toroidal flows and compute synthetics that take into account the partial visibility of the Sun. We invert the synthetics using Subtractive Optimally Localized Averages (SOLA) and also try to mitigate the systematics of mode leakage. We demonstrate that, ultimately, inversions are only as good as the model we assume for the correlation between flow velocities.