Orateur
Description
Understanding the physical mechanism responsible for the solar wind generation is one of the key objectives of the two new solar missions, Parker Solar Probe and Solar Orbiter. The Sun produces two kinds of solar winds. The first one, the fast wind, has a velocity larger than 600 km.s-1. The second one is the slow wind which velocity is slower than 400 km.s-1. Its generation mechanism is still widely debated. The corona, source region of the wind, is structured by its magnetic field. This field can be closed, i.e., magnetic loops connecting positive and negative polarities at the solar surface or open when only one footpoint of the field lines is rooted at the solar surface and the other one extends in the heliosphere. One of the existing theories to explain the observed properties of the slow wind is that the plasma, confined low in the solar atmosphere in closed magnetic field, is dynamically released into the open field thanks to magnetic reconnections between open and closed magnetic field.. Although the local magnetic field properties has been frequently studied using static models, the dynamic of the open-closed magnetic boundary remains ill-understood.
The objective of my thesis is to study the dynamics of specific magnetic geometries that can generate the slow solar wind. We perform 3D magnetohydrodynamics (MHD) numerical simulations of the solar corona and inner heliosphere using a MHD code with adaptive mesh refinement. We study the dynamics of several initial magnetic configurations, in order to provide constraints over the slow wind generation process.
In this presentation, I will present a quick overview of the slow wind generation problematics and introduce our current work and its preliminary results.
| Field | Solar & Stellar Physics |
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