Search results for "Astrophysics - Solar and Stellar Astrophysics"
showing 10 items of 347 documents
Guided flows in coronal magnetic flux tubes
2018
There is evidence for coronal plasma flows to break down into fragments and to be laminar. We investigate this effect by modeling flows confined along magnetic channels. We consider a full MHD model of a solar atmosphere box with a dipole magnetic field. We compare the propagation of a cylindrical flow perfectly aligned to the field to that of another one with a slight misalignment. We assume a flow speed of 200 km/s, and an ambient magnetic field of 30 G. We find that while the aligned flow maintains its cylindrical symmetry while it travels along the magnetic tube, the misaligned one is rapidly squashed on one side, becoming laminar and eventually fragmented because of the interaction and…
Hydrogen non-equilibrium ionisation effects in coronal mass ejections
2020
This research has received funding from the Science and Technology Facilities Council (UK) through the consolidated grant ST/N000609/1 and the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union Horizon 2020 research and innovation program (grant agreement No. 647214). D.H.M. would like to thank both the UK STFC and the ERC (Synergy grant: WHOLE SUN, grant Agreement No. 810218) for financial support. D.H.M. and P.P. would like to thank STFC for IAA funding under grant number SMC1-XAS012. This work used the DiRAC@Durham facility man-aged by the Institute for Computational Cosmology on behalf of the STFC DiRAC HPC Facility (www.dirac.ac.uk. The equipment was funded by BEIS capital fundin…
Determining the source and eruption dynamics of a stealth CME using NLFFF modelling and MHD simulations
2021
Coronal mass ejections (CMEs) that exhibit weak or no eruption signatures in the low corona, known as stealth CMEs, are problematic as upon arrival at Earth they can lead to geomagnetic disturbances that were not predicted by space weather forecasters. We investigate the origin and eruption of a stealth event that occurred on 2015 January 3 that was responsible for a strong geomagnetic storm upon its arrival at Earth. To simulate the coronal magnetic field and plasma parameters of the eruption we use a coupled approach. This approach combines an evolutionary nonlinear force-free field model of the global corona with a MHD simulation. The combined simulation approach accurately reproduces th…
MHD simulations of the in situ generation of kink and sausage waves in the solar corona by collision of dense plasma clumps
2019
Funding: This research has received funding from the UK Science and Technology Facilities Council (Consolidated Grant ST/K000950/1) and the European Union Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement No. 647214). P.A. acknowledges funding from his STFC Ernest Rutherford Fellowship (No. ST/R004285/1). This research was supported by the Research Council of Norway through its Centres of Excellence scheme, project number 262622. Context. Magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) waves are ubiquitous in the solar corona where the highly structured magnetic fields provide efficient wave guides for their propagation. While MHD waves have been observed originating from lower layers of the solar …
Effect of gravitational stratification on the propagation of a CME
2013
Our aim is to study the role of gravitational stratification on the propagation of CMEs. In particular, we assess how it influences the speed and shape of CMEs and under what conditions the flux rope ejection becomes a CME or when it is quenched. We ran a set of MHD simulations that adopt an eruptive initial magnetic configuration that has already been shown to be suitable for a flux rope ejection. We varied the temperature of the backgroud corona and the intensity of the initial magnetic field to tune the gravitational stratification and the amount of ejected magnetic flux. We used an automatic technique to track the expansion and the propagation of the magnetic flux rope in the MHD simula…
A new MHD-assisted Stokes inversion technique
2016
©2017 The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved. We present a new method of Stokes inversion of spectropolarimetric data and evaluate it by taking the example of a Sunrise/IMaX observation. An archive of synthetic Stokes profiles is obtained by the spectral synthesis of state-of-the-art magnetohydrodynamics (MHD) simulations and a realistic degradation to the level of the observed data. The definition of a merit function allows the archive to be searched for the synthetic Stokes profiles that best match the observed profiles. In contrast to traditional Stokes inversion codes, which solve the Unno–Rachkovsky equations for the polarized radiative transfer numerically and fit the …
Local simulations of the magnetized Kelvin-Helmholtz instability in neutron-star mergers
2010
Context. Global MHD simulations show Kelvin-Helmholtz (KH) instabilities at the contact surface of two merging neutron stars. That region has been identified as the site of efficient amplification of magnetic fields. However, these global simulations, due to numerical limitations, were unable to determine the saturation level of the field strength, and thus the possible back-reaction of the magnetic field onto the flow. Aims. We investigate the amplification of initially weak fields in KH unstable shear flows, and the back-reaction of the field onto the flow. Methods. We use a high-resolution ideal MHD code to perform 2D and 3D local simulations of shear flows. Results. In 2D, the magnetic …
Accretion disk coronae of intermediate polar cataclysmic variables
2017
Context. Intermediate polar cataclysmic variables (IPCV) contain a magnetic, rotating white dwarf surrounded by a magnetically truncated accretion disk. To explain their strong flickering X-ray emission, accretion has been successfully taken into account. Nevertheless, observations suggest that accretion phenomena might not be the only process behind it. An intense flaring activity occurring on the surface of the disk may generate a corona, contribute to the thermal X-ray emission, and influence the system stability. Aims. Our purposes are: investigating the formation of an extended corona above the accretion disk, due to an intense flaring activity occurring on the disk surface; studying t…
Contribution of phase-mixing of Alfvén waves to coronal heating in multi-harmonic loop oscillations
2018
This research has received funding from the Science and Technology Facilities Council (UK) through the consolidated grant ST/N000609/1 and the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program ( grant agreement No. 647214). This work is supported by the European Research Council under the SeismoSun Research Project No. 321141 (DJP). This project has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement No 724326). This work used the DiRAC Data Centric system at Durham University, operated by the Institute for Computational Cosmology on behalf o…
Simulating AIA observations of a flux rope ejection
2014
D.H.M. would like to thank STFC, the Leverhulme Trust and the European Commission’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) for their financial support. P.P. would like to thank the European Commission’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) under grant agreement SWIFF (project 263340, http://www.swiff.eu) and STFC for financial support. These results were obtained in the framework of the projects GOA/2009-009 (KU Leuven), G.0729.11 (FWO-Vlaanderen) and C 90347 (ESA Prodex 9). The research leading to these results has also received funding from the European Commission’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) under the grant agreements SOLSPANET (project No. 269299, http:// ww…