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Applied Math Colloquium

Friday, October 25th, 2013, 11:30 AM
Cullimore Lecture Hall, Lecture Hall II
New Jersey Institute of Technology

Modeling of Solar Phenomena

Alexander Kosovichev

Big Bear Solar Observatory and New Jersey Institute of Technology

Abstract

High-resolution observations of the Sun reveal a great variety of spectacular and intriguing phenomena, such as sunspots, flares, prominences, and eruptions. They represent multi-scale self-organization processes in turbulent magnetized plasma, understanding of which requires extensive modeling using a wide range of mathematical and numerical tools, from nonlinear dynamical systems to 'ab initio' numerical simulations. I present an overview of the basic problems and approaches, and focus on recently discovered small-scale vortex tubes, which appear to play a fundamental role in the solar dynamics, and our attempts to understand these using observations and modeling.