Gravity waves in the Sun

We present numerical simulations of penetrative convection and gravity wave excitation in the Sun. Gravity waves are self-consistently generated by a convective zone overlying a radiative interior. We produce power spectra for gravity waves in the radiative region as well as estimates for the energy flux of gravity waves below the convection zone. We calculate a peak energy flux in waves below the convection zone to be three orders of magnitude smaller than previous estimates for m = 1. The simulations show that the linear dispersion relation is a good approximation only deep below the convective–radiative boundary. Both low-frequency propagating gravity waves as well as higher frequency standing modes are generated although we find that convection does not continually drive the standing g-mode frequencies.