Sign Up

1111 Engineering Drive, Boulder, CO 80309

View map

Dr.  Yuto Bekki, Max Planck Research School

Numerical studies on Rossby and other inertial modes in the Sun

Thanks to more than 10 years of observations from the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO), various kinds of inertial modes have been recently detected on the Sun. The restoring force of these inertial modes is the Coriolis force, and thus they have completely different mode properties from acoustic (p) modes. It is expected that the observations of solar inertial modes can potentially be used as an alternative tool to probe the interior of the Sun, especially to constrain some unknown parameters (such as turbulent viscosity and superadiabaticity) that p-modes are insensitive to. In this talk, we use both linear and fully-nonlinear models of the solar convection zone to study the properties of solar inertial modes. We report a discovery of mixed modes between the equatorial Rossby modes and columnar convective (thermal Rossby) modes. We also find that a polar spiral flow feature, which has often been argued to be an evidence of giant convection cells, can be explained in terms of baroclinically-excited inertial modes. A possible effects of magnetic field will also be discussed.

  • Daniel Howard

1 person is interested in this event

User Activity

No recent activity