Spatiotemporal fragmentation and the uncertainties in the solar rotation law

¹ Astronomy Unit, School of Mathematical Sciences, Queen Mary, University of London, Mile End Road, London E1 4NS, UK
² Institute of Physics of the Earth, B. Gruzinskaya 10, Moscow 123810, Russia
³ Department of Mathematics, The University, Manchester M13 9PL, UK

Corresponding author: E. Covas, eoc@maths.qmw.ac.uk

Received: 12 March 2001
Accepted: 29 May 2001

Abstract

Analyses of recent helioseismic data indicate that the dynamical regimes at the base of the convection zone can be different from those observed at the top, having either significantly shorter periods or non-periodic behaviour. Recently spatiotemporal fragmentation/bifurcation has been proposed as a dynamical mechanism to account for the multi-mode behaviour that is possibly observed in the solar convection zone, without requiring separate physical mechanisms with different time scales at different depths. Here we study the robustness of this mechanism with respect to changes to the zero order rotation profile, motivated by the uncertainties of and differences between the various reductions of the helioseimic data. We find that spatiotemporal fragmentation is a common feature of the reductions investigated.