Program Overview
Understanding chromospheric dynamics is important for understanding coronal dynamics – which, in turn, is important for understanding and predicting Earth’s space weather, which is driven by coronal processes.
Magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) processes play a major role in chromospheric dynamics.
MHD simulations based on models that include a realistic representation of transport processes (e.g., electrical and thermal conduction, viscosity, thermoelectric effects, particle diffusion) are needed to understand chromospheric dynamics.
Sponsored by the National Science Foundation, SRG team members are actively researching and modeling solar atmospheric dynamics, in an effort to better understand its effect on this planet.
Significant Accomplishments
- With prior NSF funding, the PI and CO-I developed what appears to be the only MHD simulation of chromospheric dynamics based on a model that includes a complete, space and time dependent electrical conductivity tensor, the effect of gravity, and an energy equation for a variably ionized, variably magnetized, multi-species plasma. (Kazeminezhad & Goodman 2006);
- SRG’s Solar Atmosphere Modeling research will estimate the importance of the HI and proton viscosity tensors, including the effect of proton magnetization, in chromospheric heating by developing a 1.5 D steady state, finite thickness shock wave model, and a 2.5 D linear wave model. Both models will include viscosity and electrical conductivity tensors. These models will build upon previous work by the PI that models the role of the electrical conductivity tensor in chromospheric heating.
|
