Testing a Solar Coronal Magnetic Field Extrapolation Code with the Titov-Demoulin Magnetic Flux Rope Model

TL;DR

This study evaluates a magnetic field extrapolation code using an analytical flux rope model, demonstrating its high accuracy in reconstructing coronal magnetic structures and topological features from boundary data.

Contribution

The paper introduces a validation of the CESE-MHD-NLFFF extrapolation code with the Titov-Demoulin flux rope model, showing its effectiveness in reproducing complex coronal magnetic topologies.

Findings

High accuracy in reconstructing the flux rope structure.

Reliable reproduction of topological interfaces like hyperbolic flux tubes.

Demonstrates applicability to real solar boundary data.

Abstract

In the solar corona, magnetic flux rope is believed to be a fundamental structure accounts for magnetic free energy storage and solar eruptions. Up to the present, the extrapolation of magnetic field from boundary data is the primary way to obtain fully three-dimensional magnetic information of the corona. As a result, the ability of reliable recovering coronal magnetic flux rope is important for coronal field extrapolation. In this paper, our coronal field extrapolation code (CESE-MHD-NLFFF, Jiang & Feng 2012) is examined with an analytical magnetic flux rope model proposed by Titov & Demoulin (1999), which consists of a bipolar magnetic configuration holding an semi-circular line-tied flux rope in force-free equilibrium. By using only the vector field in the bottom boundary as input, we test our code with the model in a representative range of parameter space and find that the model field is reconstructed with high accuracy. Especially, the magnetic topological interfaces formed between the flux rope and the surrounding arcade, i.e., the "hyperbolic flux tube" and "bald patch separatrix surface", are also reliably reproduced. By this test, we demonstrate that our CESE-MHD-NLFFF code can be applied to recovering magnetic flux rope in the solar corona as long as the vector magnetogram satisfies the force-free constraints.