MHD Simulation of Solar Wind Using Solar Photospheric Magnetic Field Data

Authors: Keiji Hayashi
Affiliation: Stanford University, W.W. Hansen Experimental Physics Laboratory

We will present the global structure of the solar wind obtained with the time-dependent three-dimensional MHD simulation using the observation data of the solar photospheric magnetic field as the boundary values. The data we used in this study are the synoptic maps of the photospheric magnetic field observed at WSO/Stanford and MDI/SOHO data. By using the observational solar photospheric magnetic field data, we can obtain the solar wind structures at the periods of the observation, in which the interplanetary disturbances will propagate.
We will present two kinds of simulation results obtained by assuming (1) the near-isothermal polytrope gas and (2) some empirical heating models. The MHD code we have developed is based on the concept of the TVD-MUSCL and has some modifications in order to deal with the wide range of the order of the solar wind variables. We will also describe some numerical boundary treatments for the sub-sonic/Alfvenic solar surface, which is the source of the solar wind and plays important roles to determine the solar wind quantities in the entire heliosphere.
The derived MHD-based solar wind parameters, density, temperature, velocity and magnetic field, are sampled and compared with the in-situ measurements by Ulysses spacecraft at various heliocentric distances and heliographic latitudes and the nearby-Earth measurements by IMP8, ACE, WIND and other spacecrafts.