Seismic Holography of the Solar Interior near the Maximum and Minimum of Solar Activity

Abstract

The base of the convection zone and the tachocline play a major role in the study of the dynamics of the Sun, especially in the solar dynamo. Here, we present a phase-sensitive helioseismic holography method to infer changes in the sound-speed profile of the solar interior. We test the technique using numerically simulated data by Zhao et al. (Astrophys. J. 702, 1150, 2009) with sound-speed perturbations at $0.7 R_{\odot }$ . The technique adequately recovers the perturbed sound-speed profile and is seen to be capable of detecting changes in the sound speed as low as 0.05 %. We apply the method to two GONG solar time series of approximately one year, each comprising 13 Bartels rotations, BR2295–BR2307 and BR2387–BR2399, near the maximum and at a minimum of solar activity, respectively. We successfully recover a sound-speed variation with respect to a standard solar model, consistent with previous results. However, we fail to recover a realistic sound-speed variation between maximum and minimum.