Understanding how Coronal Heating and Magnetic Field Scaling Affect Global Properties of the Low and Middle Corona
Abstract
The magnetic field of the Sun is a key driver of coronal heating and solar wind acceleration. In tandem, these influence the observable morphology of the corona, along with defining the magnetic connectivity and magnitude of open magnetic flux. Here,we investigate how coronal heating affects the magnetothermal state of the 3D global corona by analyzing a series of data-constrained, thermodynamic magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) simulations for solar minimum conditions. We vary the overall heat deposited in the corona via modifying the input Poynting flux of a wave-turbulence-driven (WTD) model for coronal heating and by scaling the inner boundary magnetic field. We quantify the magnetic, thermodynamic, and combined magnetothermal effects on our simulations. We find that increasing the overall amount of heat leads to a higher magnitude of open flux and a more visibly open white-light morphology in the K-Corona between 1.5 and 6 Rsun. We quantify how plasma beta evolves and drives morphological differences between simulations. We also compare these runs to an extremely high-resolution reference solution that includes small-scale magnetic information in the surface boundary condition. This latter comparison provides insight into the further development of 'subgrid' corrections for low(er) resolution models to best represent the structure and observables of the corona and inner heliosphere.
Related
- Revisiting the Role of Global Magnetic Variables in Coronal Heating of Solar Active Regions
- Heating of Solar Coronal Loops by Converging Unipolar Magnetic Flux: Evidence from SDO Observations and a Radiative MHD Simulation
- Unified Scaling Relation for Coronal Temperature Anomaly and Solar Wind Acceleration
- Influence of numerical domain design in simulations of solar coronal heating with the MAGEC code
- Enhanced Coronal Heating Detected across the Prominence–Corona Boundary Using DKIST/Cryo-NIRSP Spectropolarimetric Observations
BibTeX
@misc{evans2026understanding,
title = {{Understanding how Coronal Heating and Magnetic Field Scaling Affect Global Properties of the Low and Middle Corona}},
author = {Caroline L. Evans and Cooper Downs and Donald Schmit},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2610.10910},
eprint = {2610.10910},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.10910},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Understanding how Coronal Heating and Magnetic Field Scaling Affect Global Properties of the Low and Middle Corona
AU - Caroline L. Evans
AU - Cooper Downs
AU - Donald Schmit
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/07
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2610.10910
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.10910
AB - The magnetic field of the Sun is a key driver of coronal heating and solar wind acceleration. In tandem, these influence the observable morphology of the corona, along with defining the magnetic connectivity and magnitude of open magnetic flux. Here,we investigate how coronal heating affects the magnetothermal state of the 3D global corona by analyzing a series of data-constrained, thermodynamic magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) simulations for solar minimum conditions. We vary the overall heat deposited in the corona via modifying the input Poynting flux of a wave-turbulence-driven (WTD) model for coronal heating and by scaling the inner boundary magnetic field. We quantify the magnetic, thermodynamic, and combined magnetothermal effects on our simulations. We find that increasing the overall amount of heat leads to a higher magnitude of open flux and a more visibly open white-light morphology in the K-Corona between 1.5 and 6 Rsun. We quantify how plasma beta evolves and drives morphological differences between simulations. We also compare these runs to an extremely high-resolution reference solution that includes small-scale magnetic information in the surface boundary condition. This latter comparison provides insight into the further development of 'subgrid' corrections for low(er) resolution models to best represent the structure and observables of the corona and inner heliosphere.
ER -