Modeling the formation and eruption of coronal structures by linking data-driven magnetofrictional and MHD simulations

The time-dependent magnetofrictional model (TMFM) is a prevalent approach that has proven to be a very useful tool in the study of the formation of unstable structures in the solar corona. In particular, it is capable of incorporating observational data as initial and boundary conditions and requires shorter computational time compared to MHD simulations. To leverage the efficiency of data-driven TMFM and also to simulate eruptive events in the MHD framework, one can apply TMFM up to a certain time before the expected eruption(s) and then go on with simulation in the full or ideal MHD regime in order to more accurately capture the eruption process. However, due to the different evolution processes in these two models, using TMFM snapshots in an MHD simulation is non-trivial with several issues that need to be addressed, both physically and numerically.

 

In this study, we showcase our progress in using magnetofrictional model results as input to dynamical MHD simulations. In particular, we discuss the incompatibility of the TMFM output to serve as the initial condition in MHD, and show our methods of mitigating this.

As our benchmark test-case, we study the evolution of NOAA active region 12673, which was previously studied using data-driven TMFM by Price et al. (2019).