COCONUT-MF: Two-fluid ion-neutral global coronal modelling

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel multi-fluid global coronal model, COCONUT-MF, which separately treats ions and neutrals, and evaluates the impact of ion-neutral interactions on plasma dynamics in the solar corona.

Contribution

The paper develops and validates a multi-fluid coronal model that accounts for ion-neutral interactions, extending previous single-fluid models and assessing their effects on plasma behavior.

Findings

Ion-neutral coupling affects plasma flow by up to 10%.

The model demonstrates higher accuracy with AUSM+ scheme.

Collisionality in the corona influences plasma dynamics despite low neutral concentrations.

Abstract

The global coronal model COCONUT was originally developed to replace models such as the WSA model in space weather forecasting to improve the physical accuracy of the predictions. This model has, however, several simplifications implemented in its formulation to allow for rapid convergence, one of which includes a single-fluid treatment. In this paper, we have two goals. Firstly, we aim to introduce a novel multi-fluid global coronal model and validate it with simple cases as well as with real data-driven applications. Secondly, we aim to investigate to what extent considering a single-fluid plasma in the global coronal model might affect the resulting plasma dynamics, and thus whether the assumptions on which the single-fluid coronal model is based are justified. We developed a multi-fluid global coronal model, COCONUT-MF, which resolves the ion and neutral fluid equations separately. While this model is still steady-state and thus does not resolve unsteady processes, it can account for charge exchange, chemical and collisional contributions. We present the results of the ion-neutral modelling for a dipole, a minimum of solar activity, and a solar maximum. We demonstrate the higher accuracy of the applied AUSM+ scheme compared to HLL. Subsequently, we also evaluate the effects of the considered ion-neutral coupling terms on the resulting plasma dynamics. Despite the very low concentration of neutrals, these terms still affect the flow field to a limited but non-negligible extent (up to 5 to 10% locally). Even though the coronal plasma is generally assumed to be collisionless, our results show that there is sufficient collisionality in it to couple the two fluids. Follow-up work will include extension of the model to lower atmospheric layers of the Sun and inclusion of more advanced physical terms such as heating and radiation.