Authors: Junwei Zhao
Affiliation: Stanford University, W.W. Hansen Experimental Physics Laboratory
Time-distance helioseismology has become a useful tool to investigate the solar interior structures and dynamics. Inversions have been performed to infer flow fields in the upper convection zone in both small and large scales. In small scales, the subsurface flow fields of sunspots and supergranules have been derived. On large scales, rotational rate, meridional flows and global vorticity distribution were inferred from MDI dynamics campaign data. Converging residual meridional flows towards the solar activity zones were found. On the other hand, wave-approximation inversion kernels are under development. Comparisons of inversion results based on ray-approximation and wave-approximation have shown both similarities and differences.