Helioseismology and Solar Abundances

Understand

Helioseismology has allowed us to study the structure of the Sun in unprecedented detail.

• One of the triumphs of the theory of stellar evolution was that helioseismic studies had shown that the structure of solar models is very similar to that of the Sun.
• However, this agreement has been spoiled by recent revisions of the solar heavy-element abundances.
• Heavy element abundances determine the opacity of the stellar material and hence, are an important input to stellar model calculations.