Absorption/Emission of Solar p-Modes: Michelson Doppler Interferometer/SOHO Observations

Abstract

We search for sources and sinks of solar p-mode waves by creating absorption maps from Dopplergrams taken by the Michelson Doppler Interferometer instrument on board SOHO. Although the maps are noisy, we present evidence for sources and sinks, of duration ~0.5-1 hour or less, based on an autocorrelation analysis of maps made from sequential intervals of data. Emission and absorption nearly balance each other in the data. This may imply that emission and absorption are inverse processes of each other rather than fundamentally different in nature.