Probing the Sun’s small-scale dynamo through solar wind diversity
The origin of solar wind has long been one of the central challenges in solar physics. It not only sets the background conditions of the near-Earth space environment but also provides the boundary conditions for planetary magnetospheres.
Recent missions, including Solar Orbiter and Parker Solar Probe, have provided new insights into the transport of mass and energy from the solar surface into the solar wind. However, linking in situ spacecraft measurements to their origins at the solar surface remains challenging, limited by uncertainties in coronal magnetic field models.
To address this issue, we have developed a three-dimensional radiative magnetohydrodynamic model that consistently connects magnetoconvection in the solar interior to the acceleration of the solar wind with minimal assumptions. This provides a powerful tool for investigating the physical relationship between solar magnetoconvection and the solar wind acceleration process.
In this talk, we will report on an extensive parameter survey focusing on how the solar wind depends on the underlying magnetism. The resulting solar wind distributions are closely linked to small-scale magnetic structures on the solar surface. This finding suggests that the characteristics of the solar wind in interplanetary space are, to a significant degree, governed by the small-scale dynamo processes operating in the solar interior.
Haruhisa Iijima is an associate professor at the Center for Integrated Data Science, Institute for Space-Earth Environmental Research, Nagoya University. He received his Ph.D. in Earth and Planetary Science from the University of Tokyo in 2016, where he developed numerical codes for radiative magnetohydrodynamic simulations to study solar chromospheric jets. His research interests include solar physics, computational physics, and space weather, with a particular focus on solar wind formation, coronal heating, solar cycle prediction, and numerical techniques for magnetohydrodynamic simulations.