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Session 33 - Dynamics of Solar Magnetic Fields.
Oral session, Tuesday, June 11
Wisconsin Center,
The structure of the heliosphere, especially the regions of fast and slow solar wind, are strongly influenced by coronal magnetic structure near the Sun. Favorable comparisons between three-dimensional MHD models of the solar corona and eclipse observations have shown that it is possible to model the structure of the large-scale solar corona. However, these models use a simplified energy equation, in which the plasma is assumed to obey an adiabatic energy equation with a reduced polytropic index. As a consequence, even though the predicted streamer structure in the corona agrees fairly well with eclipse observations, the predicted solar wind speed is not realistic. We have improved this model by adding important dynamic and thermodynamic effects, including the presence of a transition region, thermal conduction, radiation, coronal heating, and Alfvén wave acceleration. We will present results obtained with this improved model on the structure of the solar corona and solar wind.
