Helioseismic determination of opacity corrections

TL;DR

This paper develops a method to determine necessary opacity corrections in solar models by comparing their sound-speed profiles with helioseismic observations, improving model accuracy.

Contribution

It introduces a technique to infer opacity modifications from helioseismic data, enhancing the fidelity of solar models to observed sound speeds.

Findings

Opacity corrections can significantly improve model-sun sound-speed agreement.

The method accurately recovers artificial opacity modifications in test cases.

Modified models with inferred opacities match observed solar sound-speed profiles closely.

Abstract

We investigate the effect of localized opacity modifications on the sound-speed profile of solar models. The sound-speed difference between the Sun and a solar model is used to deduce the opacity correction that would be required to bring the model into agreement with the Sun. We test this procedure on artificial data for a pair of solar models and apply it to the solar sound speed as inferred from inversion of LOWL observed frequencies. We show that a solar model constructed with the appropriately modified opacity has a sound-speed profile very similar to that of the Sun.