Why do some flares cause sunquakes and others do not? A survey of 60 strong flares in Solar Cycle 24 supports a hypothesis that the coupling of downward photospheric oscillations and the impacts from flares may play a role in causing sunquakes.
A new method to derive the helioseismic sensitivity kernels for the Sun’s large-scale internal flows is developed. The new method is based on the idea of placing a small-volume flow perturbation inside the Sun’s model, simulating the wavefield in the photosphere, and then measuring the phase shifts caused by this internal perturbation.
Fourier Legendre decomposition is applied on HMI’s long-term Doppler-velocity observations to derive the Sun’s internal meridional circulation. In addition to the well-known center-to-limb effect, a non-axisymmetric component in the northern- and southern-hemisphere is identified as another systematic effect that complicates the derivation of the internal meridional circulation.
To search for signatures of Alfvénic waves in the solar photosphere, the authors analyze the oscillation amplitudes, phases and time-distance behavior between different observables in a sunspot umbra, its polarity inversion line, and surrounding area.
A sunquake event was excited by an M9.3 flare; however, the source of the sunquake waves was wave-mechanically extrapolated to about 1 megameter beneath the photosphere.
Apparent 3-min waves observed inside sunspot umbrae are modeled as excited about 1000 to 2000 km beneath sunspots’ surface.
Newly developed time-distance helioseismic imaging method, which includes more multiskip acoustic waves, is proved to be more reliable in mapping the Sun’s far-side active regions.
Subsurface meridional flows from ring-diagram analysis showed a clear hemispheric asymmetry in last 18 years. Interestingly, this flow asymmetry leads the magnetic flux and sunspot number asymmetry by 3.1 – 3.6 years.
What excites the sunspot umbral oscillations? Through analyzing two sunspots observed by FeI line, the authors found that the 3-minute umbral oscillations are likely excited by internal small-scale magnetoconvection associated with umbral dots.
A number of sunquake events were detected in the photosphere after the X9.3 flare of 6 September 2017. This analysis reported the first detection of the chromspheric response to the sunquake events using CaII and Hα observations made by the Swedish 1-meter Solar Telescope.