Three-dimensional MHD modeling of the solar corona and solar wind

M. L. Goldstein and A. V. Usmanov, NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD 20771, USA

We present simulation results from a fully three-dimensional MHD solar wind model with a tilted-dipole magnetic field on the Sun, resembling conditions near solar activity minimum. The polytropic single-fluid MHD equations, which incorporate Alfvén wave momentum and energy addition in the WKB approximation, are solved in the corotating frame by a combination of time-relaxation and marching-along-radius methods. Boundary conditions are prescribed at the coronal base and the computational region extends out to 1 AU. We show that simulation results are in agreement with the latitudinal profiles observed by Ulysses during its first fast south-to-north transition in 1994-1995.