The Astrophysical Journal, 595:L57-L61, 2003 September 20
© 2003. The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved. Printed in U.S.A.

 

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A Three-dimensional Model of the Solar Wind Incorporating Solar Magnetogram Observations

I. I. Roussev ,1 T. I. Gombosi ,1 I. V. Sokolov ,1 M. Velli ,2,3 W. Manchester IV ,1 D. L. DeZeeuw ,1 P. Liewer ,2 G. Tóth ,1,4 and J. Luhmann 5

Received 2003 July 3; accepted 2003 August 4; published 2003 August 26

ABSTRACT

We present a new compressible MHD model for simulating the three-dimensional structure of the solar wind under steady state conditions. The initial potential magnetic field is reconstructed throughout the computational volume using the source surface method, in which the necessary boundary conditions for the field are provided by solar magnetogram data. The solar wind in our simulations is powered by the energy interchange between the plasma and large-scale MHD turbulence, assuming that the additional energy is stored in the "turbulent" internal degrees of freedom. In order to reproduce the observed bimodal structure of the solar wind, the thermodynamic quantities for the initial state are varied with the heliographic latitude and longitude depending on the strength of the radial magnetic field.

Subject headings: interplanetary medium—methods: numerical—MHD—solar wind—Sun: evolution—Sun: magnetic fields

On-line material: mpeg animation


     1 Center for Space Environment Modeling, University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, 2455 Hayward Street, Ann Arbor, MI 48109-2143; iroussev@umich.edu.
     2 Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, 4800 Oak Grove Drive, Pasadena, CA 91109.
     3 Department of Astronomy and Space Science, University of Florence, Largo Enrico Fermi 5, Florence I-50125, Italy.
     4 Department of Atomic Physics, Loránd Eötvös University, Budapest H-1117, Hungary.
     5 Space Sciences Laboratory, University of California at Berkeley, Grizzly Peak at Centennial Drive, Berkeley, CA 94720-3411.

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