Are recent solar heavy element abundances consistent with helioseismology?

Abstract

During the last decade the abundances of heavy elements in the Sun have been revised downwards leading to serious discrepancy between solar models constructed using these abundances and the available seismic data. Much of these downward revision of abundances of Oxygen and other light elements was attributed to use of improved 3D solar atmospheric models. Recently, independent 3D models have been used to calculate solar abundances of these elements and calculated values are higher than the earlier estimates also obtained using 3D atmospheric models. In this work we investigate if these revised abundances are consistent with seismic data. We also investigate whether an increase in Neon abundance can help in resolving the discrepancy.