MODE CONVERSION BETWEEN DIFFERENT RADIAL ORDERS FOR SOLAR ACOUSTIC WAVES SCATTERED BY SUNSPOTS

Abstract

We study the mode conversion between different radial orders for solar acoustic waves interacting with sunspots. Solar acoustic waves are modified in the presence of sunspots. The modification in the wave can be viewed as that the sunspot, excited by the incident wave, generates the scattered wave, and the scattered wave is added to the incident wave to form the total wave inside and around the sunspot. The wavefunction of the acoustic wave on the solar surface is computed from the cross-correlation function. The wavefunction of the scattered wave is obtained by subtracting the wavefunction of the incident wave from that of the total wave. We use the incident waves of radial order n = 0-5 to measure the scattered wavefunctions from n to another radial order n' for NOAAs 11084 and 11092. The strength of scattered waves decreases rapidly with |Δn|, where Δn ≡ n' – n. The scattered waves of Δn = ±1 are visible for n ≤ 1, and significant for n ≥ 2. For the scattered wave of Δn = ±2, only few cases are visible. None of the scattered waves of Δn = ±3 are visible. The properties of scattered waves for Δn = 0 and Δn ≠ 0 are different. The scattered wave amplitude relative to the incident wave amplitude decreases with n for Δn = 0, while it increases with n for Δn ≠ 0. The scattered wave amplitudes of Δn = 0 are greater for the larger sunspot, while those of Δn ≠ 0 are insensitive to the sunspot size.