More concerning the anelastic and subseismic approximations for low-frequency modes in stars

Abstract

Two approximations, namely the subseismic approximation and the anelastic approximation, are used to filter out the acoustic modes when computing low-frequency modes of a star (gravity modes or inertial modes). In a previous paper, we observed that the anelastic approximation gave eigenfrequencies much closer to the exact ones than the subseismic approximation. Here, we try to clarify this behaviour and show that it is a result of the different physical approach taken by each approximation. On the one hand, the subseismic approximation considers the low-frequency part of the spectrum of (say) gravity modes and turns out to be valid only in the central region of a star; on the other hand, the anelastic approximation considers the Brunt–Vaisala frequency to be asymptotically small and makes no assumption concerning the order of the modes. Both approximations fail to describe the modes in the surface layers but eigenmodes issued from the anelastic approximation are closer to those including acoustic effects than their subseismic equivalent. We conclude that, as far as stellar eigenvalue problems are concerned, the anelastic approximation is better suited for simplifying the eigenvalue problem when low-frequency modes of a star are considered, while the subseismic approximation is a useful concept when analytic solutions of high-order low-frequency modes are needed in the central region of a star.