On the onset of thermal metastabilities in the solar core

Abstract

For infinitesimal, homologous perturbations, stability analysis has found the solar radiative interior thermally stable. It is considered for the first time here whether stability is preserved when finite amplitude nonhomologous perturbations are present. We argue that local heated regions may develop in the solar core due to magnetic instabilities. Simple numerical estimations are derived for the timescales of the decay of these events and, when heated bubbles are generated that rise towards the surface, of their rising motion. These estimations suggest that the solar core is in a metastable state. For more detailed analysis, we developed a numerical code to solve the differential equation system. Our calculations determined the conditions of metastability and the evolution of timescales. We obtained two principal results. One of them shows that small amplitude heating events (with energy surplus Qo < 1026 ergs) contribute to subtle but long-lifetime heat waves and give the solar interior a persistently oscillating character. Interestingly, the slow decay of heat waves may make their accumulation possible and so their overlapping may contribute to the development of an intermittent, individual, local process of bubble generation, which may also be generated directly by stronger (Q o > 1026 ergs) heating events. Our second principal result is that for heated regions with ΔT/T ≥ 10−4 and radius 105–106cm, the generated bubbles may travel distances larger than their linear size. We point out to some possible observable consequences of the obtained results.