Connecting the Sun and the Solar Wind: The Self-consistent Transition of Heating Mechanisms

We have performed a 2.5 dimensional magnetohydrodynamic simulation that resolves the propagation and dissipation of Alfven waves in the solar atmosphere. Alfvenic fluctuations are introduced on the bottom boundary of the extremely large simulation box that ranges from the photosphere to far above the solar wind acceleration region. Our model is ab initio in the sense that no corona and no wind are assumed initially.The numerical experiment reveals the quasi-steady solution that has the transition from the cool to the hot atmosphere and the emergence of the high speed wind. The global structure of the resulting hot wind solution fairly well agree with the coronal and the solar wind structure inferred from observations. The purpose of this study is to complement the previous paper by Matsumoto & Suzuki (2012) and describe the more detailed results and the analysis method. These results include the dynamics of the transition region and the more precisely measured heating rate in the atmosphere. Particularly, the spatial distribution of the heating rate helps us to interpret the actual heating mechanisms in the numerical simulation.Our estimation method of heating rate turned out to be a good measure for dissipation of Alfven waves and low beta fast waves.

Connecting the Sun and the Solar Wind: The First 2.5 Dimensional Self-consistent MHD Simulation under the Alfven Wave Scenario

The solar wind emanates from the hot and tenuous solar corona. Earlier studies using 1.5 dimensional simulations show that Alfv{e}n waves generated in the photosphere play an important role in coronal heating through the process of non-linear mode conversion. In order to understand the physics of coronal heating and solar wind acceleration together, it is important to consider the regions from photosphere to interplanetary space as a single system. We performed 2.5 dimensional, self-consistent magnetohydrodynamic simulations, covering from the photosphere to the interplanetary space for the first time. We carefully set up the grid points with spherical coordinate to treat the Alfv{e}n waves in the atmosphere with huge density contrast, and successfully simulate the solar wind streaming out from the hot solar corona as a result of the surface convective motion. The footpoint motion excites Alfv{e}n waves along an open magnetic flux tube, and these waves traveling upwards in the non-uniform medium undergo wave reflection, nonlinear mode conversion from Alfv{e}n mode to slow mode, and turbulent cascade. These processes leads to the dissipation of Alfv{e}n waves and acceleration of the solar wind. It is found that the shock heating by the dissipation of the slow mode wave plays a fundamental role in the coronal heating process whereas the turbulent cascade and shock heating drive the solar wind.

Temporal power spectra of the horizontal velocity of the solar photosphere

We have derived the temporal power spectra of the horizontal velocity of the solar photosphere. The data sets for 14 quiet regions observed with the Gband filter of Hinode/SOT are analyzed to measure the temporal fluctuation of the horizontal velocity by using the local correlation tracking (LCT) method. Among the high resolution (~0.2) and seeing-free data sets of Hinode/SOT, we selected the observations whose duration is longer than 70 minutes and cadence is about 30 s. The so-called k-{omega} diagrams of the photospheric horizontal velocity are derived for the first time to investigate the temporal evolution of convection. The power spectra derived from k-omega diagrams typically have a double power law shape bent over at a frequency of 4.7 mHz. The power law index in the high frequency range is -2.4 while the power law index in the low frequency range is -0.6. The root mean square of the horizontal speed is about 1.1 km/s when we use a tracer size of 0.4 in LCT method. Autocorrelation functions of intensity fluctuation, horizontal velocity, and its spatial derivatives are also derived in order to measure the correlation time of the stochastic photospheric motion. Since one of possible energy sources of the coronal heating is the photospheric convection, the power spectra derived in the present study will be of high value to quantitatively justify various coronal heating models.