Work

Toward High-order Solar Corona Simulations: A High-order Hyperbolized Poisson Approach for Magnetic Field Initialization

Year: 2025

Type: article

Abstract: Proper initialization of the solar corona magnetic field is important for easing the iterative process of realistic and efficient global magnetohydrodynamics (MHD) simulations. This study introduces a high-order flux reconstruction (FR) framework for solving the Poisson equation, a necessary step for computing a potential-field source-surface (PFSS) to initialize the magnetic field for global solar corona simulations with MHD. By hyperbolizing the elliptic Poisson equation into a set of hyperbolic equations, we develop an efficient and robust high-order PFSS solver. Our contributions include developing a Q2 (i.e., quadratic) geometrical representation using prismatic elements for the computational domain, which enables high-order mesh generation. Such a hyperbolized Poisson solver effectively relaxes magnetic fields extrapolated from solar magnetograms, producing scalar potential fields that align well with theoretical expectations. Extensive verification was conducted on the high-order FR solver for polynomial orders up to P3, achieving fourth-order spatial accuracy. The hyperbolized solver demonstrates comparable accuracy to reference solutions (both analytical and numerical) while offering efficient performance, particularly on coarser meshes, making it competitive with state-of-the-art low-order finite volume solvers, which are mostly used for solar MHD simulations. The described developments are a milestone for enabling high-order global solar corona simulations on 3D unstructured grids.

Source: The Astrophysical Journal

DOI: 10.3847/1538-4357/adace5

Authors: Rayan Dhib, Firas Ben Ameur, Vatsalya Sharma, Andrea Lani, Stefaan Poedts

Language: English

Topic: Solar and Space Plasma Dynamics

Subfield: Astronomy and Astrophysics

Field: Physics and Astronomy

Domain: Physical Sciences

Open Access status: gold

Estimated APC paid: $4,499