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Is the solar core rotating faster or slower than the envelope?

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Abstract

The Sun is not a rigid body and it is well known that its surface rotation is differential, the polar regions rotating substantially slower than the equator. This differential rotation has been demonstrated by helioseismology to continue down to the base of the convective zone, below which it becomes closer to a rigid body rotation. Far deeper, inside the energy generating core, the rotation has generally been assumed to be much faster, keeping memory of the presumably high speed of the young Sun. However, several recent results of helioseismology have decreased this likelihood more and more, so that the core rotation could be suspected to be only marginally, or even not at all faster than the envelope. Certain results would even imply a core rotation slower than the envelope, an interesting but unlikely possibility. We present here a complete analysis of the rotational splitting of the low degree modes measured in three different time series obtained in 1990, 1991, and 1992 by the IRIS full-disk network. With a time of integration slightly longer than 4 months, the splitting has been measured by 4 different global methods on 42 doublets of l = 1, 35 triplets of l = 2, and 30 quadruplets of l = 3. With a high level of confidence, our result is consistent with a rigid solar core rotation.

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Lazrek, M., Pantel, A., Fossat, E. et al. Is the solar core rotating faster or slower than the envelope?. Sol Phys 166, 1–16 (1996). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00179353

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