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R. Lionello, J. A. Linker, Z. Mikic (SAIC)
Magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) models of the corona and solar wind have been successful in reproducing many aspects of coronal structure, as evidenced by favorable comparisons with eclipse and coronagraph observations. However, the models do not accurately reproduce the solar wind velocity in interplanetary space. This deficiency of the models can be traced to the simple (polytropic) energy equation assumed. To model solar wind acceleration, a more sophisticated treatment of thermodynamic processes in the corona and solar wind is required. We have developed a computational model of the solar wind that includes thermal conduction parallel to the magnetic field, radiation, coronal heating, and Alfvén wave pressure. Thermal conduction in the model is collisionally dominated in the inner corona and smoothly becomes collisionless in the outer corona. We have performed a two-dimensional simulation of the solar wind in a computational domain that encompasses the upper chromosphere, the transition region, the corona, and the interplanetary space up to 1 A.U. We have obtained a steady-state solution that reproduces the observed pattern of speeds, densities, and particle fluxes of the fast polar wind and the slow equatorial wind.
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The author(s) of this abstract have provided an email address for comments about the abstract: lionel@iris023.saic.com