The scientific objectives of this research are to understand how internal solar magnetoconvection powers the Suns activity, and how that activity heats the chromosphere and corona and accelerates charged particles to relativistic energies. The approach uses three-dimensional, compressible, finite difference, magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) codes to solve the equations for mass, momentum and internal energy in conservative form plus the induction equation for the magnetic field. A particle in-cell plasma code is used to calculate charged particle acceleration and radiation in regions of reconnecting magnetic fields. The project has requested and been granted a substantial allocation of computer resources on the leadership class Blue Waters system at NCSA.
