Global MHD modeling of the solar wind

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

A three-dimensional magnetohydrodynamic model is used to simulate the global structure of the solar corona and solar wind in the spherical shell between the coronal base and 100 AU. The model accounts for the effects of Alfven wave acceleration near the Sun and for the interaction of solar wind protons with interstellar neutral hydrogen in the outer heliosphere. We use the time-relaxation method to construct a steady-state solution of time-dependent equations in the inner computation region (1-20 solar radii) and a direct integration along radius of steady-state equations outside 20 solar radii. The relaxation code is an implementation of the spatially third-order, semi-discrete Central Weighted Essentially Non-Oscillatory (CWENO) numerical scheme of Kurganov and Levy [2000]. We present simulation results for the solar conditions typical of solar minimum and other phases of the solar cycle.