1995/12/13 by Pawan Kumar, Eliot Quataert, Eliot J. Quataert +1 · 3 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Amplitude #Convection #Flux (metallurgy) #Ionosphere and magnetosphere dynamics #Limit (mathematics) #Solar and Space Plasma Dynamics #Solar physics #Solar wind #Spectral density #Stellar, planetary, and galactic studies #astro-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1086/309926
published as Astrophys.J. 458 (1996) L83-L85 · uuencoded postscript file with 1 uuencoded postscript figure to appear in ApJ Letters
arxiv created 1995/12/13 · openalex publication_date 1996/02/20 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · arxiv updated 2016/08/30 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
We argue that the solar g -modes are unlikely to have caused the discrete peaks in the power spectrum of the solar wind flux observed by Thomson et al (1995). The lower limit to the energy of individual g -modes, using the amplitudes given by Thomson et al., is estimated to be at least 10 36 ergs for low-order g -modes; the resulting surface velocity amplitude is at least 50 cm s -1 , larger than the observational upper limit (5 cm s -1 ). We suggest that the most likely source for the excitation of solar g -modes is turbulent stresses in the convection zone. The surface velocity amplitude of low-degree and low-order g -modes resulting from this process is estimated to be of order 10 -2 cm s -1 . This amplitude is interestingly close to the detection threshold of the SOHO satellite. The long lifetime of g -modes (~10 6 yr for low-order modes) should be helpful in detecting these small-amplitude pulsations.