A1 Refereed original research article in a scientific journal
SIP-IFVM: A Time-evolving Coronal Model with an Extended Magnetic Field Decomposition Strategy
Authors: Wang, Haopeng; Yang, Liping; Poedts, Stefaan; Lani, Andrea; Zhou, Yuhao; Gao, Yuhang; Linan, Luis; Lv, Jiakun; Baratashvili, Tinatin; Guo, Jinhan; Lin, Rong; Su, Zhan; Li, Caixia; Zhang, Man; Wei, Wenwen; Yang, Yun; Li, Yucong; Ma, Xinyi; Husidic, Edin; Jeong, Hyun-Jin; Najafi-Ziyazi, Mahdi; Wang, Juan; Schmieder, Brigitte
Publisher: Institute of Physics Publishing, Inc.
Publishing place: BRISTOL
Publication year: 2025
Journal: Astrophysical Journal Supplement
Journal name in source: The Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series
Journal acronym: ASTROPHYS J SUPPL S
Article number: 59
Volume: 278
Issue: 2
Number of pages: 17
ISSN: 0067-0049
eISSN: 1538-4365
DOI: https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-4365/add0b1
Web address : https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-4365/add0b1
Self-archived copy’s web address: https://research.utu.fi/converis/portal/detail/Publication/499182280
Time-evolving magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) coronal modeling, driven by a series of time-dependent photospheric magnetograms, represents a new generation of coronal simulations. This approach offers more realistic results than traditional steady coronal models constrained by a static magnetogram. However, its practical application is significantly limited by the low computational efficiency and poor numerical stability in solving low-beta issues common in coronal simulations. To address this, we propose an extended magnetic field decomposition strategy and successfully implement it in an implicit MHD coronal model. The traditional decomposition strategies split the magnetic field into a time-invariant potential field and a time-dependent component B1. This works well for quasi-steady-state coronal simulations where divided by B1 divided by is typically small. However, when the inner-boundary magnetic field evolves, divided by B1 divided by can grow significantly, and its discretization errors often lead to nonphysical negative thermal pressure, ultimately causing the simulation to crash. In the extended magnetic field decomposition strategy, we split the magnetic field into a temporally piecewise-constant field and a time-varying component, B1. This effectively keeps divided by B1 divided by consistently small throughout the simulations and performs well in solving time-evolving low-beta issues, thereby outperforming traditional methods. We incorporate this improved strategy into our implicit MHD coronal model and apply it to simulate the evolution of coronal structures within 0.1 au over two solar-maximum Carrington rotations. The results show that this coronal model effectively captures observational features and performs more than 80 times faster than real-time evolutions using only 192 CPU cores, making it well suited for practical applications in simulating the time-evolving corona.
Downloadable publication This is an electronic reprint of the original article. |  |
Funding information in the publication:
This project has received funding from the European Research Council Executive Agency (ERCEA) under the ERC-AdG agreement No. 101141362 (Open SESAME). These results were also obtained in the framework of the projects FA9550-18-1-0093 (AFOSR), C16/24/010 (C1 project Internal Funds KU Leuven), G0B5823N and G002523N (WEAVE) (FWO-Vlaanderen), and 4000145223 (SIDC Data Exploitation (SIDEX), ESA Prodex). This work also benefits from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant Nos. 42030204, 42204155, 42274213, and 42474216), and the Specialized Research Fund for State Key Laboratories managed by the Chinese State Key Laboratory of Space Weather. The resources and services used in this work were provided by the Flemish Supercomputer Centre (VSC), funded by the Research Foundation–Flanders (FWO) and the Flemish Government. This work utilizes data obtained by the Global Oscillation Network Group (GONG) program, managed by the National Solar Observatory and operated by AURA, Inc., under a cooperative agreement with the National Science Foundation. The data were acquired by instruments operated by the Big Bear Solar Observatory, High Altitude Observatory, Learmonth Solar Observatory, Udaipur Solar Observatory, Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias, and Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory. The authors also acknowledge the use of the STEREO/SECCHI data produced by a consortium of the NRL (US), LMSAL (US), NASA/GSFC (US), RAL (UK), UBHAM (UK), MPS (Germany), CSL (Belgium), IOTA (France), and IAS (France). This research is (partially) funded by the BK21 FOUR program of Graduate School, Kyung Hee University (GS-1-JO-NON-20242364). E.H. is grateful to the Space Weather Awareness Training Network (SWATNet) funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No. 955620. Y.Z. acknowledges funding from Research Foundation–Flanders FWO under project No. 1256423N.
