Viscous-inertial waves on the surface of the Sun: modeling, forward and inverse problems

Abstract: This paper develops a mathematical framework for studying the newly discovered solar inertial oscillations, offering promising new avenues for exploring the Sun's dynamics. Under the assumption of purely toroidal motions, the stream function of the flow satisfies a fourth-order scalar equation governing inertial waves on the rotating Sun. We prove well-posedness of wave solutions under explicit conditions on differential rotation. Moreover, we study the inverse problem of simultaneously reconstructing viscosity and differential rotation parameters from either complete or partial surface observations. To this end, we verify the tangential cone condition, ensuring the convergence of iterative regularization methods. Numerical experiments employing the Nesterov-Landweber iteration confirm robustness of the reconstruction across different observation schemes and noise levels.