A comparison of the use of genetic and hill-climbing algorithms to fit low-l solar p-mode spectra

We present a comparative study of low-l solar p-mode parameters extracted by genetic-algorithm and ‘standard’ hill-climbing minimisation routines. To effect this we make use of observations made in integrated sunlight by the Birmingham Solar-Oscillations Network (BiSON) and the GOLF instrument on board the ESA/NASA SOHO satellite, in addition to artificial data. We find that over the central part of the p-mode range the two fitting routines return similar results. However, at low frequencies — where the S/N in the modes is low and their resonant peaks narrow — we find that the genetic routine appears to offer more robust estimates of the underlying parameters.