Propagation of MHD waves in twisted magnetic flux tubes
Principal Investigators : Arun Mangalam
(Home page) ,
Gary Verth ( Department of Mathematics, University of Sheffield)
(Home page) ,
Project duration : August 2021 --- August 2023
Royal Society International Exchange Award
The surface of the Sun, the photosphere, is the best region to obtain information about the solar magnetic
features. Several advanced ground and space observations have revealed many details of solar magnetism, which play an essential role in various phenomena in the solar atmosphere. The outer atmosphere of the Sun,
called the corona, starts above the transition region and extends up to the interplanetary region. Understanding
how the outer reaches of the Sun, the corona, is at a temperature of a million degrees is an outstanding puzzle
in Solar Physics. This proposal aims at quantifying one of the possible sources of coronal heating: wave
propagation and dissipation. The proposal deploys novel techniques and formulae for exploring twisted
magnetic configurations and the MHD waves associated with them. We expect that the dynamics of the
vortices and the estimation of the energy fluxes in the solar atmosphere will reveal the channeling of energy to
fulfill the energy losses in the chromosphere and the corona. The study will provide us with a useful and valid
means to calculate the magnetic structure and the energy budget that dissipates in the solar atmosphere,
which is one possible means of energy transport.