Letter to the Editor

Helioseismic limit on heavy element abundance

¹ Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Homi Bhabha Road, Mumbai 400005, India
² Department of Physics, University of Mumbai, Mumbai 400098, India

Corresponding author: H. M. Antia, antia@tifr.res.in

Received: 5 August 2002
Accepted: 27 August 2002

Abstract

Primary inversions of accurately measured solar oscillation frequencies coupled with the equations of thermal equilibrium and other input physics, enable us to infer the temperature and hydrogen abundance profiles inside the Sun. These profiles also help in setting constraints on the input physics as well as on heavy element abundance in the solar core. Using different treatments of plasma screening for nuclear reaction rates, limits on the cross-section of proton-proton nuclear reaction as a function of heavy element abundance in the solar core are obtained and an upper limit on heavy element abundance in the solar core is also derived from these results.