  Recent observations indicate that solar p-mode line profiles are not exactly
Lorentzian, but rather exhibit varying amounts of asymmetry about their
respective peaks. We analyze p-mode line asymmetry using both a simplified
one-dimensional model and a more realistic solar model. We find that the amount
of asymmetry exhibited by a given mode depends on the location of the sources
exciting the mode, the mode frequency, and weakly on the mode spherical
harmonic degree, but not on the particular mechanism or location of the
damping. We calculate the dependence of line asymmetry on source location for
solar p-modes, and provide physical explanations of our results in terms of the
simplified model. A comparison of our results to the observations of line
asymmetry in velocity spectra reported by Duvall et al. (1993) for modes of
frequency $\sim$ 2.3 mHz suggests that the sources for these modes are located
more than 325 km beneath the photosphere. This source depth is greater than
that found by Kumar (1994) for acoustic waves of frequency $\sim$ 6 mHz. The
difference may indicate that waves of different frequencies are excited at
different depths in the convection zone. We find that line asymmetry causes the
frequency obtained from a Lorentzian fit to a peak in the power spectrum to
differ from the corresponding eigenfrequency by an amount proportional to a
dimensionless asymmetry parameter and to the mode linewidth.
