The Role of Turbulence in Coronal Heating and Solar Wind Expansion

Plasma in the Sun's hot corona expands into the heliosphere as a supersonic and highly magnetized solar wind. This paper provides an overview of our current understanding of how the corona is heated and how the solar wind is accelerated. Recent models of magnetohydrodynamic turbulence have prog...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inarXiv.org
Main Authors Cranmer, S R, Asgari-Targhi, M, Miralles, M P, Raymond, J C, Strachan, L, Tian, H, Woolsey, L N
Format Paper Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Ithaca Cornell University Library, arXiv.org 07.12.2014
Subjects
Activation
Computational fluid dynamics
Coronas
Fluid flow
Heating
Heliosphere
Magnetohydrodynamic turbulence
Magnetohydrodynamics
Physics - Solar and Stellar Astrophysics
Plasmas (physics)
Solar surface
Solar wind
Variation
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Summary:Plasma in the Sun's hot corona expands into the heliosphere as a supersonic and highly magnetized solar wind. This paper provides an overview of our current understanding of how the corona is heated and how the solar wind is accelerated. Recent models of magnetohydrodynamic turbulence have progressed to the point of successfully predicting many observed properties of this complex, multi-scale system. However, it is not clear whether the heating in open-field regions comes mainly from the dissipation of turbulent fluctuations that are launched from the solar surface, or whether the chaotic "magnetic carpet" in the low corona energizes the system via magnetic reconnection. To help pin down the physics, we also review some key observational results from ultraviolet spectroscopy of the collisionless outer corona.
ISSN:2331-8422
DOI:10.48550/arxiv.1412.2307