Global MHD simulations of the solar convective zone using a volleyball mesh decomposition. I. Pilot

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel volleyball mesh decomposition and a new Riemann solver to perform high-resolution global MHD simulations of the solar convection zone, successfully capturing turbulent convection and magnetic field amplification.

Contribution

The paper presents a new mesh decomposition method and an entropy-based Riemann solver for global solar MHD simulations, enabling better connection between internal and surface solar models.

Findings

Development of a no-singularity spherical mesh decomposition.

Successful simulation of turbulent convection and magnetic field amplification.

Evidence of small-scale dynamo action within the simulation.

Abstract

Solar modelling has long been split into ''internal'' and ''surface'' modelling, because of the lack of tools to connect the very different scales in space and time, as well as the widely different environments and dominating physical effects involved. Significant efforts have recently been put into resolving this disconnect. We address the outstanding bottlenecks in connecting internal convection zone and dynamo simulations to the surface of the Sun, and conduct a proof-of-concept high resolution global simulation of the convection zone of the Sun, using the task-based DISPATCH code framework. We present a new `volleyball' mesh decomposition, which has Cartesian patches tessellated on a sphere with no singularities. We use our new entropy based HLLS approximate Riemann solver to model magneto-hydrodynamics in a global simulation, ranging between 0.655 -- 0.995 R$_\odot$, with an initial ambient magnetic field set to 0.1 Gauss. The simulations develop convective motions with complex, turbulent structures. Small-scale dynamo action twists the ambient magnetic field and locally amplifies magnetic field magnitudes by more than two orders of magnitude within the initial run-time.