Evidence that solar flares drive global oscillations in the Sun

Abstract

Solar flares are large explosions on the Sun's surface caused by a sudden release of magnetic energy. They are known to cause local short-lived oscillations travelling away from the explosion like water rings. Here we show that the energy in the solar acoustic spectrum is correlated with flares. This means that the flares drive global oscillations in the Sun in the same way that the entire Earth is set ringing for several weeks after a major earthquake like the December 2004 Sumatra-Andaman Earthquake. The correlation between flares and energy in the acoustic spectrum of disk-integrated sunlight is stronger for high-frequency waves than for ordinary p-modes which are excited by the turbulence in the near surface convection zone immediately beneath the photosphere.