A Time-Dependent Turbulence-Driven Model of the Solar Wind

Although the mechanisms responsible for heating the Sun's corona and accelerating the solar wind are still actively investigated, it is largely accepted that photospheric motions provide the energy source and that the magnetic field must play a key role in the process. Verdini et al. (2010) presented a model for heating and accelerating the solar wind based on the turbulent dissipation of Alfven waves. We first use our time-dependent model of the solar wind to reproduce Verdini et al's solution; then we extend its application to the case when the energy equation includes thermal conduction and radiation losses, and the upper chromosphere is part of the computational domain.Application of this formulation to our 3D MHD model of the solar corona and solar wind will be discussed.