A Nearly Incompressible Turbulence-Driven Solar Wind Model

Abstract

We develop a 1D steady-state turbulence driven-solar wind model by coupling recently developed nearly incompressible magnetohydrodynamic turbulence transport model equations and 1D hydrodynamic solar wind equations. The dissipation of majority component quasi-2D turbulence and minority slab turbulence generated by the emergence of the “magnetic carpet” from the photosphere is responsible for heating the coronal plasma. We solve the coupled quasi-2D and slab turbulence transport equations and the solar wind equations from the base of the solar corona until 20 solar radii. We find that i) the coronal temperature increases to ~ 2.5 × 106 K near the base of the solar corona; ii) the solar wind accelerates rapidly within a few solar radii; iii) turbulence energy densities decrease and correlation lengths increase with distance; iv) balanced quasi-2D turbulence at the coronal base becomes imbalanced, and imbalanced slab turbulence becomes more imbalanced with distance, and v) the normalized quasi-2D and slab residual energy becomes positive near the coronal base, and both energies become negative with increasing distance.