Research Note

Monte Carlo simulation of solar p-mode profiles revisited: Bias and uncertainty estimation from one, not many, fits

¹ School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Birmingham, Edgbaston, Birmingham B15 2TT, UK e-mail: [ype;wjc]@bison.ph.bham.ac.uk
² Institute of Theoretical Astrophysics, University of Oslo, PO Box 1029 Blindern, 0315 Oslo, Norway e-mail: tierry.toutain@astro.uio.no

Received: 9 December 2004
Accepted: 19 January 2005

Abstract

It is quite common in helioseismology to use extensive Monte Carlo simulations to investigate the bias and associated uncertainties in fitted p-mode parameters. This can, however, be very time-intensive if the fitting problem is complicated or large datasets (in time or resolution) are involved. Here, we show that it is often possible to reduce significantly the task by taking advantage of the statistical properties of the p-mode profiles.