Multifluid Modeling of the Partially Ionized Chromosphere with Effects of Impact Ionization, Radiative Recombination and Charge Exchange

Abstract:

Neutrals play an important role in the evolution of the weakly ionized solar chromosphere where the number density of neutrals can vastly exceed the number density of protons. Therefore modeling the neutral-ion interactions and studying the effect of neutrals on the ambient plasma properties is an important task for better understanding the observed emission lines and the propagation of disturbances from the photosphere to the transition region and the corona. To pursue this goal we have developed two-fluid and three-fluid simulation setups to study the interaction between electrons, ions and neutrals in a reactive gravitationally stratified collisional media. The model considers the electrons and ions within the resistive MHD approach with Coulomb collisions and anisotropic heat flux determined by Braginskii’s transport coefficients. The electromagnetic fields are evolved according to the full Maxwell equations, allowing for propagation of higher frequency waves neglected by the standard MHD approximation. Separate mass, momentum and energy conservation equations are considered for the neutrals and the interaction between the different fluids is determined by the chemical reactions, such as impact ionization, radiative recombination and charge exchange, provided as additional source terms. To initialize the system we consider an ideal gas equation of state with equal initial temperatures for the electrons, ions and the neutrals and different density profiles. The initial temperature and density profiles are height-dependent and follow VAL C atmospheric model for the solar chromosphere. We have searched for a chemical and collisional equilibrium between the ions and the neutrals in the hydrostatic case to avoid unphysical outflows and artificial heating induced by initial pressure imbalances. Next we consider ion-neutral interactions in magnetized plasma with an initial magnetic profile, corresponding to emerging magnetic funnel. Finally we include an external driver to simulate the propagation of MHD waves in the partially ionized gravitationally stratified system.