Implementation and Comparison of Acoustic Travel-Time Measurement Procedures for the Solar Dynamics Observatory/Helioseismic and Magnetic Imager Time - Distance Helioseismology Pipeline

S. Couvidat, J. Zhao, A. C. Birch, A. G. Kosovichev, T. L. Duvall, K. Parchevsky, P. H. Scherrer

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

17 Scopus citations

Abstract

The Helioseismic and Magnetic Imager (HMI) instrument onboard the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) satellite is designed to produce high-resolution Doppler-velocity maps of oscillations at the solar surface with high temporal cadence. To take advantage of these high-quality oscillation data, a time - distance helioseismology pipeline (Zhao et al., Solar Phys. submitted, 2010) has been implemented at the Joint Science Operations Center (JSOC) at Stanford University. The aim of this pipeline is to generate maps of acoustic travel times from oscillations on the solar surface, and to infer subsurface 3D flow velocities and sound-speed perturbations. The wave travel times are measured from cross-covariances of the observed solar oscillation signals. For implementation into the pipeline we have investigated three different travel-time definitions developed in time - distance helioseismology: a Gabor-wavelet fitting (Kosovichev and Duvall, SCORE'96: Solar Convection and Oscillations and Their Relationship, ASSL, Dordrecht, 241, 1997), a minimization relative to a reference cross-covariance function (Gizon and Birch, Astrophys. J. 571, 966, 2002), and a linearized version of the minimization method (Gizon and Birch, Astrophys. J. 614, 472, 2004). Using Doppler-velocity data from the Michelson Doppler Imager (MDI) instrument onboard SOHO, we tested and compared these definitions for the mean and difference travel-time perturbations measured from reciprocal signals. Although all three procedures return similar travel times in a quiet-Sun region, the method of Gizon and Birch (Astrophys. J. 614, 472, 2004) gives travel times that are significantly different from the others in a magnetic (active) region. Thus, for the pipeline implementation we chose the procedures of Kosovichev and Duvall (SCORE'96: Solar Convection and Oscillations and Their Relationship, ASSL, Dordrecht, 241, 1997) and Gizon and Birch (Astrophys. J. 571, 966, 2002). We investigated the relationships among these three travel-time definitions, their sensitivities to fitting parameters, and estimated the random errors that they produce.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)357-374
Number of pages18
JournalSolar Physics
Volume275
Issue number1-2
DOIs
StatePublished - Jan 2012
Externally publishedYes

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

  • Astronomy and Astrophysics
  • Space and Planetary Science

Keywords

  • HMI
  • Sun: helioseismology
  • Sun: time - distance analysis

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