English

A self-consistent model of the coronal heating and solar wind acceleration including compressible and incompressible heating processes

Solar and Stellar Astrophysics 2018-02-21 v3

Abstract

We propose a novel one-dimensional model that includes both shock and turbulence heating and qualify how these processes contribute to heating the corona and driving the solar wind. Compressible MHD simulations allow us to automatically consider shock formation and dissipation, while turbulent dissipation is modeled via a one-point closure based on Alfv\'en wave turbulence. Numerical simulations were conducted with different photospheric perpendicular correlation lengths λ0\lambda_0, which is a critical parameter of Alfv\'en wave turbulence, and different root-mean-square photospheric transverse-wave amplitudes δv0\delta v_0. For the various λ0\lambda_0, we obtain a low-temperature chromosphere, high-temperature corona, and supersonic solar wind. Our analysis shows that turbulence heating is always dominant when λ01 Mm\lambda_0 \lesssim 1{\rm \ Mm}. This result does not mean that we can ignore the compressibility because the analysis indicates that the compressible waves and their associated density fluctuations enhance the Alfv\'en wave reflection and therefore the turbulence heating. The density fluctuation and the cross helicity are strongly affected by λ0\lambda_0, while the coronal temperature and mass loss rate depend weakly on λ0\lambda_0.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1712.07760,
  title  = {A self-consistent model of the coronal heating and solar wind acceleration including compressible and incompressible heating processes},
  author = {Munehito Shoda and Takaaki Yokoyama and Takeru K. Suzuki},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1712.07760},
  year   = {2018}
}

Comments

Accepted for publicaiton in The Astrophysical Journal