Speaker
Description
First Name: Cooper
Last Name: Downs
Email Address: cdowns@predsci.com
Affiliation: Predictive Science Inc.
All Authors: Cooper Downs, Caroline L. Evans, Donald Schmit, Jon A. Linker, Viacheslav S. Titov
Abstract: Our march toward increasingly higher-resolution photospheric and coronal measurements has revealed a close connection between low coronal processes and small-scale flux elements at the surface below. At the same time, large field of view observations of the low and middle corona reveal fine-scale plasma structures embedded within the magnetic skeleton of the global corona. Understanding the links between the small-scale photospheric field and the structuring of the global corona has important implications for coronal heating and solar wind formation. In this presentation, we detail our ongoing effort to study this problem from a global perspective, by varying properties of the surface magnetic field inputs to a thermodynamic MHD model of the global solar corona. By incorporating magnetic data at different resolutions—both globally and locally—we find that the magnetic mappings of both closed- and open-field regions within the corona become increasingly fragmented and complex. We show how this fragmented connectivity leads to subtle changes in flux-tube properties at the base of the corona. This provides a means to alter both the local coronal heating rate and thermodynamic properties of coronal flux-tubes, which links to fine-scale structures that can be observed within the extended corona and solar wind. The implications for the dynamical evolution in the corona and heliosphere as a result of driving by the quiet-sun magnetic network are also discussed.