Stellar winds govern the angular momentum evolution of solar-like stars throughout their main-sequence lifetime. The efficiency of this process depends on the geometry of the star's magnetic field. There has been a rapid increase recently in the number of stars for which this geometry can be determined through spectropolarimetry. We present a computationally efficient method to determine the 3D geometry of the stellar wind and to estimate the mass loss rate and angular momentum loss rate based on these observations. Using solar magnetograms as examples, we quantify the extent to which the values obtained are affected by the limited spatial resolution of stellar observations. We find that for a typical stellar surface resolution of 20$^{\rm o}$-30$^{\rm o}$, predicted wind speeds are within 5$\%$ of the value at full resolution. Mass loss rates and angular momentum loss rates are within 5-20$\%$. In contrast, the predicted X-ray emission measures can be under-estimated by 1-2 orders of magnitude, and their rotational modulations by 10-20$\%$.
Alfvén-wave-driven 3D magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) models, which are increasingly used to predict stellar wind properties, contain unconstrained parameters and rely on low-resolution stellar magnetograms. We explore the effects of the input Alfvén wave energy flux and the surface magnetogram on the wind properties predicted by the Alfvén Wave Solar Model (AWSoM). We lowered the resolution of two solar magnetograms during solar cycle maximum and minimum using spherical harmonic decomposition. The Alfvén wave energy was altered based on non-thermal velocities determined from a far ultraviolet (FUV)…
Estimating Electric Fields from Vector Magnetogram Sequences
确定太阳光球层上的电场(E场)分布对于定量研究能量如何从太阳光球层通过日冕流入日光层至关重要。这个电场还为太阳大气和日地系统的数据驱动模型提供了有价值的输入。我们展示了如何法拉第定律可以与观测到的矢量磁图时间序列来估计光球E场,一个不适定的反演问题。我们的方法使用的矢量磁场的时间导数的“poloidal-toroidal分解”(PTD)。PTD解不是唯一的;标量势的梯度可以被添加到PTD E场而不影响与法拉第定律的一致性。我们提出了一个迭代的技术来确定一个潜在的功能符合理想的MHD的演变,但这个E场也不是一个唯一的解决方案法拉第定律。最后,我们探索了一种变分方法,最大限度地减少了能量泛函,以确定一个独特的E-场,类似于Longcope的“最小能量拟合”。PTD技术,迭代技术和变分技术被用来估计E-场从一对合成矢量磁图取自MHD模拟,这些E-场与模拟的已知电场进行比较。并将这三种方法应用于太阳活动区NOAA AR 8210的一对矢量磁图,用实际数据进行了验证。
It is a common practice in the solar physics community to test whether or not measured photospheric or chromospheric vector magnetograms are force-free, using the Maxwell stress as a measure. Some previous studies have suggested that magnetic fields of active regions in the solar chromosphere are close to be force-free whereas there is no consistency among previous studies on whether magnetic fields of active regions in the solar photosphere are force-free or not. Here we use three kinds of representative magnetic fields (analytical force-free solutions, modeled solar-like force-free fields an…
The input of the Solar wind models plays a significant role in accurate solar wind predictions at 1 AU. This work introduces a synthetic magnetogram produced from a dynamo model as an input for Magnetohydrodynamics (MHD) simulations. We perform a quantitative study that compares the Space Weather Modeling Framework (SWMF) results for the observed and the synthetic solar magnetogram input. For each case, we compare the results for Extreme Ultra-Violet (EUV) images and extract the simulation data along the earth trajectory to compare with in-situ observations. We initialize SWMF using the real a…
We use magnetograms of 8 solar analogues of ages 30~Myr to 3.6~Gyr obtained from Zeeman Doppler Imaging (ZDI) and taken from the literature, together with two solar magnetograms, to drive magnetohydrodynamical (MHD) wind simulations and construct an evolutionary scenario of the solar wind environment and its angular momentum loss rate. With observed magnetograms of the radial field strength as the only variant in the wind model, we find that power law model fitted to the derived angular momentum loss rate against time, $t$, results in a spin down relation $Ω\propto t^{-0.51}$, for angular spee…
Low-mass stars are known to have magnetic fields that are believed to be of dynamo origin. Two complementary techniques are principally used to characterise them. Zeeman-Doppler imaging (ZDI) can determine the geometry of the large-scale magnetic field while Zeeman broadening can assess the total unsigned flux including that associated with small-scale structures such as spots. In this work, we study a sample of stars that have been previously mapped with ZDI. We show that the average unsigned magnetic flux follows an activity-rotation relation separating into saturated and unsaturated regimes…
Ensemble Modeling of the Solar Wind Flow with Boundary Conditions Governed by Synchronic Photospheric Magnetograms. I. Multi-point Validation in the Inner Heliosphere
Close-in planets orbiting around low-mass stars are exposed to intense energetic photon and particle radiation and harsh space weather. We have modeled such conditions for Proxima Centauri b (Garraffo et al. 2016b), a rocky planet orbiting in the habitable-zone of our closest neighboring star, finding a stellar wind pressure three orders of magnitude higher than the solar wind pressure on Earth. At that time, no Zeeman-Doppler observations of the surface magnetic field distribution of Proxima Cen were available and a proxy from a star with similar Rossby number to Proxima was used to drive the…
The rotational evolution of cool stars is governed by magnetised stellar winds which slow the stellar rotation during their main sequence lifetimes. Magnetic variability is commonly observed in Sun-like stars, and the changing strength and topology of the global field is expected to affect the torque exerted by the stellar wind. We present three different methods for computing the angular momentum loss in the solar wind. Two are based on MHD simulations from Finley & Matt (2018), with one using the open flux measured in the solar wind, and the other using remotely-observed surface magnetograms…
Stellar winds govern the spin-down of Solar-type stars as they age, and play an important role in determining planetary habitability, as powerful winds can lead to atmospheric erosion. We calculate three-dimensional stellar wind models for five young Solar-type stars in the Hyades cluster, using TOUPIES survey stellar magnetograms and state-of-the-art Alfvén wave driven wind modelling. The stars have the same 0.6-Gyr age and similar fundamental parameters, and we account for the uncertainty in and underestimation of absolute field strength inherent in Zeeman-Doppler imaging by adopting both un…
Observations of rapidly-rotating cool stars often show coronal slingshot prominences that remove mass and angular momentum when they are ejected. The derived masses of these prominences show a scatter of some two orders of magnitude. In order to investigate if this scatter could be intrinsic, we use a full magnetic cycle of solar magnetograms to model the coronal structure and prominence distribution in a young Sun, where we scale the field strength in the magnetograms with angular velocity according to $ B \propto Ω^{-1.32} $. We reproduce both the observed prominence masses and their scatter…
Magnetic activity and rotation are known to be intimately linked for low-mass stars. Understanding rotation evolution over the stellar lifetime is therefore an important goal within stellar astrophysics. In recent years, there has been increased focus on how the complexity of the stellar magnetic field affects the rate of angular momentum-loss from a star. This is a topic that Zeeman-Doppler imaging (ZDI), a technique that is capable of reconstructing the large-scale magnetic field topology of a star, can uniquely address. Using a potential field source surface model, we estimate the open flux…
The development of the Zeeman-Doppler Imagine (ZDI) technique has provided synoptic observations of surface magnetic fields of low-mass stars. This led the Stellar Astrophysics community to adopt modeling techniques that have been used in solar physics using solar magnetograms. However, many of these techniques have been neglected by the solar community due to their failure to reproduce solar observations. Nevertheless, some of these techniques are still used to simulate the coronae and winds of solar analogs. Here we present a comparative study between two MHD models for the solar corona and …
Magnetic activity is known to be correlated to the rotation period for moderately active main sequence solar-like stars. In turn, the stellar rotation period evolves as a result of magnetised stellar winds that carry away angular momentum. Understanding the interplay between magnetic activity and stellar rotation is therefore a central task for stellar astrophysics. Angular momentum evolution models typically employ spin-down torques that are formulated in terms of the surface magnetic field strength. However, these formulations fail to account for the magnetic field geometry, unlike those tha…
Extreme-ultraviolet images from the Solar Dynamics Observatory often show looplike fine structure to be present where no minority-polarity flux is visible in magnetograms, suggesting that the rate of ephemeral region (ER) emergence inside "unipolar" regions has been underestimated. Assuming that this rate is the same inside coronal holes as in the quiet Sun, we show that interchange reconnection between ERs and open field lines gives rise to a solar wind energy flux that exceeds 10$^5$ erg cm$^{-2}$ s$^{-1}$ and that scales as the field strength at the coronal base, consistent with observation…
In this paper we seek to understand the timescale on which the photospheric motions on the Sun braid coronal magnetic field lines. This is a crucial ingredient for determining the viability of the braiding mechanism for explaining the high temperatures observed in the corona. We study the topological complexity induced in the coronal magnetic field, primarily using plasma motions extracted from magneto-convection simulations. This topological complexity is quantified using the field line winding, finite time topological entropy and passive scalar mixing. With these measures we contrast mixing …
High-Resolution Modelling of Coronae and Winds in Solar-type Stars with Varying Rotation Rates II. Stellar Winds
Nanjing University(南京大学);Key Laboratory of Modern Astronomy and Astrophysics (Nanjing University), Ministry of Education(教育部现代天文与天体物理重点实验室(南京大学));Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics Potsdam(波茨坦莱布尼茨天体物理研究所);University of Birmingham(伯明翰大学);Aalto University(阿尔托大学);Max-Planck-Institut für Sonnensystemforschung(马克斯·普朗克太阳系研究所);Nordita, KTH Royal Institute of Technology & Stockholm University(诺迪塔,皇家理工学院与斯德哥尔摩大学)
A generalized method for estimating solar wind speeds and densities using spectral broadening for a Kolmogorov turbulence spectrum
Indian Institute of Technology Indore(印度印多尔理工学院);Indian Space Research Organization(印度空间研究组织);ISRO Telemetry Tracking and Command Network(印度空间监测跟踪与指令网络);The University of Tokyo(东京大学);Kyoto Sangyo University(京都产业大学)
This study examines the relationship between magnetic field complexity and mass and angular momentum losses. Observations of open clusters have revealed a bimodal distribution of the rotation periods of solar-like stars that has proven difficult to explain under the existing rubric of magnetic braking. Recent studies suggest that magnetic complexity can play an important role in controlling stellar spin-down rates. However, magnetic morphology is still neglected in most rotation evolution models due to the difficulty of properly accounting for its effects on wind driving and angular momentum l…
Energetic particles emitted by active stars are likely to propagate in astrospheric magnetized plasma turbulent and disrupted by the prior passage of energetic Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs). We carried out test-particle simulations of $\sim$ GeV protons produced at a variety of distances from the M1Ve star AU~Microscopii by coronal flares or travelling shocks. Particles are propagated within the large-scale quiescent three-dimensional magnetic field and stellar wind reconstructed from measured magnetograms, and { within the same stellar environment following passage of a $10^{36}$~erg kinetic …