Modelling continuum intensity perturbations caused by solar acoustic oscillations

TL;DR

This paper models how solar acoustic oscillations perturb continuum intensity by solving the radiative transfer problem, revealing geometrical effects and phase shifts that improve understanding of systematic errors in helioseismology.

Contribution

It provides the most comprehensive model linking wave displacement to intensity perturbations, including geometrical effects and phase shifts, enhancing helioseismic analysis accuracy.

Findings

Intensity perturbations are significantly affected by geometrical effects.

Phase shifts between temperature and intensity increase towards the solar limb.

Improved modeling explains discrepancies in earlier intensity computations.

Abstract

Helioseismology is the study of the solar interior using observations of oscillations at the surface. It suffers from systematic errors, such as a center-to-limb error in travel-time measurements. Understanding these errors requires a good understanding of the nontrivial relationship between wave displacement and helioseismic observables. The wave displacement causes perturbations in the atmospheric thermodynamical quantities which perturb the opacity, the optical depth, the source function, and the local ray geometry, thus affecting the emergent intensity. We aim to establish the most complete relationship up to now between the displacement and the intensity perturbation by solving the radiative transfer problem in the atmosphere. We derive an expression for the intensity perturbation caused by acoustic oscillations at any point on the solar disk by applying the first-order perturbation theory. As input, we consider adiabatic modes of oscillation of different degrees. The background and the perturbed intensities are computed considering the main sources of opacity in the continuum. We find that, for all modes, the perturbations to the thermodynamical quantities are not sufficient to model the intensity. In addition, the geometrical effects due to the displacement must be taken into account as they lead to a difference in amplitude and a phase shift between the temperature at the surface and intensity perturbations. The closer to the limb, the larger the differences. This work presents improvements for the computation of the intensity perturbations, in particular for high-degree modes, and explains differences in intensity computations in earlier works. The phase shifts and amplitude differences between the temperature and intensity perturbations increase towards the limb. This should help to interpret some of the systematic center-to-limb effects observed in local helioseismology.