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Modeling Solar Wind Mass-Loading Due to Dust in the Solar Corona

Anthony Rasca

Applied Mathematics,Ìý

Date and time:Ìý

Thursday, November 14, 2013 - 10:00am

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Engineering Center, ECOT 831

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Collisionless mass-loading was first discussed to describe interactions between
the solar wind and cometary atmospheres. Recent observations
have led to an increased interest in mass-loading occurring in the solar
corona, due to both sungrazing comets and collisional debris production
by sunward migrating interplanetary dust particles. Direct coronal wind
observations from future space missions, such as Solar Probe Plus, may
reveal such dust sources, motivating the need of a theoretical model for
mass-loading in the coronal wind.
This dissertation begins with developing a simple 1D hydrodynamic
solar wind mass-loading model, demonstrating the effects of mass-loading
dust into the wind. Second, the mass-loading model used in the 1D code is
adapted for use with an MHD Solar Corona (SC) component of the Space
Weather Modeling Framework (SWMF), with initial results compared to
1D results. The new SC component is then used for a sungrazing cometary
dust source example, utilizing orbital and mass loss estimates from the
recent sungrazer, Comet C/2011 W3 (Lovejoy). Both a point source and
tail source (a dust source spread across a syndyne/synchrone-defined
tail) of dust are used to generate a mass-loaded coronal wind. Last, we
use results from our sungrazing comet example to show how solar wind
properties will appear to a solar probe passing downwind of a cometary
dust source.