Using the Butterfly Effect to Probe How the Sun Generates Acoustic Noise

A major encumbrance to recognition of individual episodes of noise emission is the accumulation over hours of other noise emitted long before. This is true in simulations just as it is in the solar environment itself. The composite seismic signature of acoustic radiation accumulated over preceding hours drowns out the signature of newly emitted “acoustic pings.” This problem could be alleviated in simulations by periodically damping the accumulated acoustic radiation – if this can be done benignly, i.e. in such a way that the onset transient of the damping (and its subsequent termination) does not emit its own acoustic noise. We introduce a way of doing this based upon a study of the butterfly effect in compressible radiative MHD simulations of convection that excites p-modes. This gives us an encouraging preview of what further development of this utility offers for an understanding of the character of p-mode generation in convective atmospheres.