On Jupiter's inertial mode oscillations

Abstract

Properties of inertial modes of Jupiter are investigated for an n=1 polytropic description of the planet interior. We use the anelastic approximation to overcome the usual handicap of a severe spherical harmonics truncation. A powerful iterative solver then allows us to compute the frequencies of the most promising low-order modes using as many spherical harmonics as necessary. The induced O(1%) errors of our model are now within observational limits. A plausible seismological model of Jupiter might thus be at hand provided the use of a more realistic description of the planet interior.

4 pages, 2 figures, 1 table