Large-scale flows in the solar interior: Effect of asymmetry in peak profiles

Ring diagram analysis can be used to study large-scale velocity fields in the outer part of the solar convection zone. All previous works assume that the peak profiles in the solar oscillation power spectrum are symmetrical. However, it has now been demonstrated that the peaks are not symmetrical. In this work we study how the explicit use of asymmetrical peak profiles in ring diagram analysis influences the estimated velocity fields. We find that the use of asymmetrical profiles leads to significant improvement in the fits, but the estimated velocity fields are not substantially different from those obtained using a symmetrical profile to fit the peaks. The resulting velocity fields are compared with those obtained by other investigators.