Long-Term Variation of Helioseismic Far-Side Images and What Causes It

TL;DR

This study analyzes 11 years of helioseismic far-side images to understand their variation and finds that travel-time shifts are strongly anti-correlated with the Sun's global magnetic activity, influenced by surface magnetic interactions.

Contribution

It introduces a new long-term helioseismic far-side imaging technique and identifies surface magnetic interactions as a key cause of travel-time variation.

Findings

Travel-time shifts vary with the solar cycle.

Travel-time shifts are anti-correlated with global magnetic activity.

Surface magnetic interactions influence acoustic wave travel times.

Abstract

A new time--distance far-side imaging technique was recently developed by utilizing multiple multi-skip acoustic waves. The measurement procedure is applied to 11 years of Doppler observations from the Solar Dynamics Observatory / Helioseismic and Magnetic Imager, and over 8000 far-side images of the Sun have been obtained with a 12-hour temporal cadence. The mean travel-time shifts in these images unsurprisingly vary with the solar cycle. However, the temporal variation does not show good correlations with the magnetic activity in their respective northern or southern hemisphere, but show very good anti-correlation with the global-scale magnetic activity. We investigate four possible causes of this travel-time variation. Our analysis demonstrates that the acoustic waves that are used for mapping the Sun's far side experience surface reflections around the globe, where they may interact with surface or near-surface magnetic field, and carry travel-time deficits with them. The mean far-side travel-time shifts from these acoustic waves therefore vary in phase with the Sun's magnetic activity.