Engineering topics

Kusano, K

Publications and source records attributed to Kusano, K.

3 records

DOE OSTI2012

MAGNETIC FIELD STRUCTURES TRIGGERING SOLAR FLARES AND CORONAL MASS EJECTIONS

Solar flares and coronal mass ejections, the most catastrophic eruptions in our solar system, have been known to affect terrestrial environments and infrastructure. However, because their triggering mechanism is still not sufficiently understood, our capacity to predict the occurrence of solar eruptions and to forecast space weather is substantially hindered. Even though various models have been proposed to determine the onset of solar eruptions, the types of magnetic structures capable of triggering these eruptions are still unclear. In this study, we solved this problem by systematically surveying the nonlinear dynamics caused by a wide variety of magnetic structures in terms of three-dimensional magnetohydrodynamic simulations. As a result, we determined that two different types of small magnetic structures favor the onset of solar eruptions. These structures, which should appear near the magnetic polarity inversion line (PIL), include magnetic fluxes reversed to the potential component or the nonpotential component of major field on the PIL. In addition, we analyzed two large flares, the X-class flare on 2006 December 13 and the M-class flare on 2011 February 13, using imaging data provided by the Hinode satellite, and we demonstrated that they conform to the simulation predictions. These results suggest that forecasting of solar eruptions is possible with sophisticated observation of a solar magnetic field, although the lead time must be limited by the timescale of changes in the small magnetic structures.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

DOE OSTI2012

A STUDY OF THE HELIOCENTRIC DEPENDENCE OF SHOCK STANDOFF DISTANCE AND GEOMETRY USING 2.5D MAGNETOHYDRODYNAMIC SIMULATIONS OF CORONAL MASS EJECTION DRIVEN SHOCKS

We perform four numerical magnetohydrodynamic simulations in 2.5 dimensions (2.5D) of fast coronal mass ejections (CMEs) and their associated shock fronts between 10 Rs and 300 Rs. We investigate the relative change in the shock standoff distance, {Delta}, as a fraction of the CME radial half-width, D {sub OB} (i.e., {Delta}/D {sub OB}). Previous hydrodynamic studies have related the shock standoff distance for Earth's magnetosphere to the density compression ratio (DR; {rho} {sub u}/{rho} {sub d}) measured across the bow shock. The DR coefficient, k {sub dr}, which is the proportionality constant between the relative standoff distance ({Delta}/D {sub OB}) and the compression ratio, was semi-empirically estimated as 1.1. For CMEs, we show that this value varies linearly as a function of heliocentric distance and changes significantly for different radii of curvature of the CME's leading edge. We find that a value of 0.8 {+-} 0.1 is more appropriate for small heliocentric distances (<30 Rs) which corresponds to the spherical geometry of a magnetosphere presented by Seiff. As the CME propagates its cross section becomes more oblate and the k {sub dr} value increases linearly with heliocentric distance, such that k {sub dr} = 1.1 is most appropriate at a heliocentric distance of about 80 Rs. For terrestrial distances (215 Rs) we estimate k {sub dr} = 1.8 {+-} 0.3, which also indicates that the CME cross-sectional structure is generally more oblate than that of Earth's magnetosphere. These alterations to the proportionality coefficients may serve to improve investigations into the estimates of the magnetic field in the corona upstream of a CME as well as the aspect ratio of CMEs as measured in situ.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

DOE OSTI2012

PREPROCESSING MAGNETIC FIELDS WITH CHROMOSPHERIC LONGITUDINAL FIELDS

Nonlinear force-free field (NLFFF) extrapolation is a powerful tool for the modeling of the magnetic field in the solar corona. However, since the photospheric magnetic field does not in general satisfy the force-free condition, some kind of processing is required to assimilate data into the model. In this paper, we report the results of new preprocessing for the NLFFF extrapolation. Through this preprocessing, we expect to obtain magnetic field data similar to those in the chromosphere. In our preprocessing, we add a new term concerning chromospheric longitudinal fields into the optimization function proposed by Wiegelmann et al. We perform a parameter survey of six free parameters to find minimum force- and torque-freeness with the simulated-annealing method. Analyzed data are a photospheric vector magnetogram of AR 10953 observed with the Hinode spectropolarimeter and a chromospheric longitudinal magnetogram observed with SOLIS spectropolarimeter. It is found that some preprocessed fields show the smallest force- and torque-freeness and are very similar to the chromospheric longitudinal fields. On the other hand, other preprocessed fields show noisy maps, although the force- and torque-freeness are of the same order. By analyzing preprocessed noisy maps in the wave number space, we found that small and large wave number components balance out on the force-free index. We also discuss our iteration limit of the simulated-annealing method and magnetic structure broadening in the chromosphere.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗