In this post we describe the configurations used for the solar washing machine simulations. We consider

  1. a model atmosphere which is gravitationally stratified and based on the VAL IIIc model..
  2. An idealised flux tube model.

We outlined the simulations in the project description “Solar Washing Machine”

All the simulations and models are detailed on git hub smaug_wash@github

Configuration Generation

Creating atmospheric profiles

We used the solar atmosphere profiles of Vernazza, J. E., Avrett, E. H., & Loeser The data from the valIIIc and McWhirter model is contained in atmos.xls

The table in atmos.xls has 4 columns described as follows:

  1. atmospheric height (m)
  2. Temperature (K)
  3. Density (kg/m^3)
  4. Pressure

The following matlab files use this model data to generate the atmospheric

  1. An idealised flux tube model createmodel_uniformdensity_vertmagfluxtube.m
  2. a model atmosphere which is gravitationally stratified and based on VAL IIIc createextatmosmodel.m

we also use the hdf inspired data structures

Main routines to use here are createmodel - uses valiiic data to interpolate between photosphere and 6Mm createextmodel - uses valiiic data to interpolate between photosphere and 6Mm. Use data fitting to extrapolate data to corona upto 12Mm

Both of these routines can call generatefield generatefield - build magnetic flux tube uses hydrostatic pressure balance to compute correct pressure and energy for the model

The field generation routines are based on IDL routines which were used to generate the configurations for some of the earlier simulation work with gravitationally stratified solar atmospheres.

Oscillatory Response of the 3D Solar Atmosphere to the Leakage of Photospheric Motion

Three-dimensional Simulations of Magnetohydrodynamic Waves in Magnetized Solar Atmosphere

The original IDL code is available at B_field_3D_tube.pro B_field_3D_vertical.pro B_field_vertical_tube.pro

These are for the case of a flux tube, a uniform vertical field and a vertical tube.

The codes construct the fields in such a way as to maintain hydrostatic balance. See for example our post magnetohydrostatic equlibria

testgeneratefield testsac3dread testsac3dwrite

For the simulations consider here labelled with the prefix uni1, uni2, uni3 and uni4 we used the matlab code createmodel_uniformdensity_vertmagfluxtube.m this code generates a uniform cylindrical vertical field with a uniform density. The density is 0.0001 outside the tube and 0.0002 inside the tube. We generated a configuration with a maximum field of 1.5kG generatefield_verttube_rhouni.m