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Register a new userSolar Atmosphere Radiative Transfer Model Comparison based on 3D MHD simulations
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Added by
Margit Haberreiter Dr.
Publication date
2021
fields
Physics
and research's language is
English
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The reconstruction of the solar spectral irradiance (SSI) on various time scales is essential for the understanding of the Earths climate response to the SSI variability. The driver of the SSI variability is understood to be the intensity contrast of magnetic features present on the Sun with respect to the largely non-magnetic quiet Sun. However, different spectral synthesis codes lead to diverging projections of SSI variability. In this study we compare three different radiative transfer codes and carry out a detailed analysis of their performance. We perform the spectral synthesis at the continuum wavelength of 665 nm with the Code for Solar Irradiance (COSI), and the Rybicki-Hummer (RH), and Max Planck University of Chicago Radiative MHD (MURaM) codes for three 3D MHD simulations snapshots, a non-magnetic case, and MHD simulations with 100 G, and 200 G magnetic field strength. We determine the intensity distributions, the intensity differences and ratios for the spectral synthesis codes. We identify that the largest discrepancies originate in the intergranular lanes where the most field concentration occurs. Overall, the applied radiative transfer codes give consistent intensity distributions. Also, the intensity variation as a function of magnetic field strength for the particular 100 G and 200 G snapshots agree within the 2-3% range.
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Resonance spectral lines such as H I Ly {alpha}, Mg II h&k, and Ca II H&K that form in the solar chromosphere are influenced by the effects of 3D radiative transfer as well as partial redistribution (PRD). So far no one has modeled these lines including both effects simultaneously owing to the high computing demands of existing algorithms. Such modeling is however indispensable for accurate diagnostics of the chromosphere. We present a computationally tractable method to treat PRD scattering in 3D model atmospheres using a 3D non-LTE radiative transfer code. To make the method memory-friendly, we use the hybrid approximation of Leenaarts et al. (2012) for the redistribution integral. To make it fast, we use linear interpolation on equidistant frequency grids. We verify our algorithm against computations with the RH code and analyze it for stability, convergence, and usefulness of acceleration using model atoms of Mg II with the h&k lines and H I with the Ly {alpha} line treated in PRD. A typical 3D PRD solution can be obtained in a model atmosphere with $252 times 252 times 496$ coordinate points in 50 000--200 000 CPU hours, which is a factor ten slower than computations assuming complete redistribution. We illustrate the importance of the joint action of PRD and 3D effects for the Mg II h&k lines for disk-center intensities as well as the center-to-limb variation. The proposed method allows simulating PRD lines in time series of radiation-MHD models in order to interpret observations of chromospheric lines at high spatial resolution.
We present the implementation of a radiative transfer solver with coherent scattering in the new BIFROST code for radiative magneto-hydrodynamical (MHD) simulations of stellar surface convection. The code is fully parallelized using MPI domain decomposition, which allows for large grid sizes and improved resolution of hydrodynamical structures. We apply the code to simulate the surface granulation in a solar-type star, ignoring magnetic fields, and investigate the importance of coherent scattering for the atmospheric structure. A scattering term is added to the radiative transfer equation, requiring an iterative computation of the radiation field. We use a short-characteristics-based Gauss-Seidel acceleration scheme to compute radiative flux divergences for the energy equation. The effects of coherent scattering are tested by comparing the temperature stratification of three 3D time-dependent hydrodynamical atmosphere models of a solar-type star: without scattering, with continuum scattering only, and with both continuum and line scattering. We show that continuum scattering does not have a significant impact on the photospheric temperature structure for a star like the Sun. Including scattering in line-blanketing, however, leads to a decrease of temperatures by about 350,K below log tau < -4. The effect is opposite to that of 1D hydrostatic models in radiative equilibrium, where scattering reduces the cooling effect of strong LTE lines in the higher layers of the photosphere. Coherent line scattering also changes the temperature distribution in the high atmosphere, where we observe stronger fluctuations compared to a treatment of lines as true absorbers.
Coronal rain consists of cool and dense plasma condensations formed in coronal loops as a result of thermal instability. Previous numerical simulations of thermal instability and coronal rain formation have relied on artificially adding a coronal heating term to the energy equation. To reproduce large-scale characteristics of the corona, using more realistic coronal heating prescription is necessary. We analyse coronal rain formation and evolution in a 3-dimensional radiative magnetohydrodynamic simulation spanning from convection zone to corona which is self-consistently heated by magnetic field braiding as a result of convective motions. We investigate the spatial and temporal evolution of energy dissipation along coronal loops which become thermally unstable. Ohmic dissipation in the model leads to the heating events capable of inducing sufficient chromospheric evaporation into the loop to trigger thermal instability and condensation formation. The cooling of the thermally unstable plasma occurs on timescales comparable to the duration of the individual impulsive heating events. The impulsive heating has sufficient duration to trigger thermal instability in the loop but does not last long enough to lead to coronal rain limit cycles. We show that condensations can either survive and fall into the chromosphere or be destroyed by strong bursts of Joule heating associated with a magnetic reconnection events. In addition, we find that condensations can also form along open magnetic field lines.
Bright points (BPs) in the solar photosphere are radiative signatures of magnetic elements described by slender flux tubes located in the darker intergranular lanes. They contribute to the ultraviolet (UV) flux variations over the solar cycle and hence may influence the Earths climate. Here we combine high-resolution UV and spectro-polarimetric observations of BPs by the SUNRISE observatory with 3D radiation MHD simulations. Full spectral line syntheses are performed with the MHD data and a careful degradation is applied to take into account all relevant instrumental effects of the observations. It is demonstrated that the MHD simulations reproduce the measured distributions of intensity at multiple wavelengths, line-of-sight velocity, spectral line width, and polarization degree rather well. Furthermore, the properties of observed BPs are compared with synthetic ones. These match also relatively well, except that the observations display a tail of large and strongly polarized BPs not found in the simulations. The higher spatial resolution of the simulations has a significant effect, leading to smaller and more numerous BPs. The observation that most BPs are weakly polarized is explained mainly by the spatial degradation, the stray light contamination, and the temperature sensitivity of the Fe I line at 5250.2 AA{}. The Stokes $V$ asymmetries of the BPs increase with the distance to their center in both observations and simulations, consistent with the classical picture of a production of the asymmetry in the canopy. This is the first time that this has been found also in the internetwork. Almost vertical kilo-Gauss fields are found for 98 % of the synthetic BPs. At the continuum formation height, the simulated BPs are on average 190 K hotter than the mean quiet Sun, their mean BP field strength is 1750 G, supporting the flux-tube paradigm to describe BPs.
Measurements from the Solar Irradiance Monitor (SIM) onboard the SORCE mission indicate that solar spectral irradiance at Visible and IR wavelengths varies in counter phase with the solar activity cycle. The sign of these variations is not reproduced by most of the irradiance reconstruction techniques based on variations of surface magnetism employed so far, and it is not clear yet whether SIM calibration procedures need to be improved, or if instead new physical mechanisms must be invoked to explain such variations. We employ three-dimensional magneto hydrodynamic simulations of the solar photosphere to investigate the dependence of solar radiance in SIM Visible and IR spectral ranges on variations of the filling factor of surface magnetic fields. We find that the contribution of magnetic features to solar radiance is strongly dependent on the location on the disk of the features, being negative close to disk center and positive toward the limb. If features are homogeneously distributed over a region around the equator (activity belt) then their contribution to irradiance is positive with respect to the contribution of HD snapshots, but decreases with the increase of their magnetic flux for average magnetic flux larger than 50 G in at least two of the Visible and IR spectral bands monitored by SIM. Under the assumption that the 50 G snapshots are representative of quiet Sun regions we find thus that the Spectral Irradiance can be in counter-phase with the solar magnetic activity cycle.
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