Correlation between solar acoustic emission and phase of the solar cycle

Abstract:

The solar acoustic emission is closely related to solar convection and magnetic field. Understanding the relation between the acoustic emission and the phase of a solar cycle is important to understand the dynamics of solar cycles and excitation of acoustic waves. In this work we use 4 years of SDO/HMI data from 05/2010 to 04/2014, covering the growing phase of the solar cycle 24, to study the acoustic emissions of the whole sun and of only the quiet sun regions respectively, at multiple frequency bands. We also analyze the correlations between the acoustic emissions and solar activity level indexed by daily sunspot number and magnetic flux. The results show that the correlation between the whole-sun acoustic emission and solar activity level is negative for low frequencies at 2.5-4.5 mHz, with a peak value around -0.9, and is positive for high frequencies at 4.5-6.0 mHz, with a peak value around 0.9. For high frequencies, the acoustic emission excess in sunspot halos overwhelms the emission deficiency in sunspot umbrae and penumbrae. The correlation between the quiet-sun acoustic emission and solar activity level is negative for 2.5-4.0 mHz and positive for 4.0-5.5 mHz, with peak values over ±0.8. This shows that the solar background acoustic power, with active regions excluded, is indeed varying during a solar cycle, implying the excitation frequencies or depths are highly related to the solar magnetic field.