The investigator incorporates a partially ionized plasma state into the 'anelastic' fluid equations describing the solar convection zone, enabling a simulation of solar supergranulation. This phenomenon, first discovered in 1964, may have a connection with one of the ionization zones of hydrogen or helium occurring at about 30,000 kilometers. Investigators are now testing this hypothesis through numerical simulation, and including a variety of physical effects in the proposed model. Their simulations of the fluid mechanics of plasma where constituent elements may undergo ionization when heated minimize perturbations, causing only slight deviations from the basic equilibrium thermodynamic state. This anelastic approximation holds throughout the solar convection zone, except very close to the photosphere. The investigators' tests increase in complexity over the three-year program, finally extending the model to three dimensions and pursuing large-scale simulations of turbulent, ionizing MHD convection. Research results will reveal much about the physics of solar supergranulation.
