59 research outputs found
Winds of Planet Hosting Stars
The field of exoplanetary science is one of the most rapidly growing areas of
astrophysical research. As more planets are discovered around other stars, new
techniques have been developed that have allowed astronomers to begin to
characterise them. Two of the most important factors in understanding the
evolution of these planets, and potentially determining whether they are
habitable, are the behaviour of the winds of the host star and the way in which
they interact with the planet. The purpose of this project is to reconstruct
the magnetic fields of planet hosting stars from spectropolarimetric
observations, and to use these magnetic field maps to inform simulations of the
stellar winds in those systems using the Block Adaptive Tree Solar-wind Roe
Upwind Scheme (BATS-R-US) code. The BATS-R-US code was originally written to
investigate the behaviour of the Solar wind, and so has been altered to be used
in the context of other stellar systems. These simulations will give
information about the velocity, pressure and density of the wind outward from
the host star. They will also allow us to determine what influence the winds
will have on the space weather environment of the planet. This paper presents
the preliminary results of these simulations for the star Bo\"otis,
using a newly reconstructed magnetic field map based on previously published
observations. These simulations show interesting structures in the wind
velocity around the star, consistent with the complex topology of its magnetic
field.Comment: 8 pages, 2 figures, accepted for publication in the peer-reviewed
proceedings of the 14th Australian Space Research Conference, held at the
University of South Australia, 29th September - 1st October 201
SPH simulations of Shakura-Sunyaev instability at intermediate accretion rates
We show that a standard Shakura-Sunyaev accretion disc around a black hole
with an accretion rate lower than the critical Eddington limit does show the
instability in the radiation pressure dominated zone. We obtain this result
performing time-dependent simulations of accretion disks for a set of values of
the viscosity parameter and accretion rate. In particular we always find the
occurrence of the collapse of the disc: the instability develops always towards
a collapsed gas pressure dominated disc and not towards the expansion. This
result is valid for all initial configurations we tested. We find significant
convective heat flux that increases the instability development time, but is
not strong enough to inhibit the disc collapse. A physical explanation of the
lack of the expansion phase is proposed considering the role of the radial heat
advection. Our finding is relevant since it excludes the formation of the hot
comptonizing corona -often suggested to be present- around the central object
by the mechanism of the Shakura-Sunyaev instability. We also show that, in the
parameters range we simulated, accretion disks are crossed by significant
amplitude acoustic waves.Comment: 8 pages, 12 Postscript figures, uses natbib.sty, accepted for
publication in MNRA
The winds of young Solar-type stars in the Hyades
Stellar winds govern the spin-down of Solar-type stars as they age, and play an important role in determining planetary habitability, as powerful winds can lead to atmospheric erosion. We calculate 3D stellar wind models for five young Solar-type stars in the Hyades cluster, using TOUPIES survey stellar magnetograms and state-of-the-art Alfvén wave-driven wind modelling. The stars have the same 0.6 Gyr age and similar fundamental parameters, and we account for the uncertainty in and underestimation of absolute field strength inherent in Zeeman-Doppler imaging by adopting both unscaled and scaled (by a factor of five) field strengths. For the unscaled fields, the resulting stellar wind mass-loss is 2-4 times greater and the angular momentum loss 2-10 times greater than for the Sun today, with the scaled results correspondingly greater. We compare our results with a range published of wind models and for the Alfvén wave-driven modelling see evidence of mass-loss saturation at
Redox interactions of Tc(VII), U(VI), and Np(V) with microbially reduced biotite and chlorite
Seasonal winter forecasts and the stratosphere
Published© 2016 Royal Meteorological Society. We investigate seasonal forecasts of the winter North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) and their relationship with the stratosphere. Climatological frequencies of sudden stratospheric warming (SSW) and strong polar vortex (SPV) events are well represented and the predicted risk of events varies between 25 and 90% from winter to winter, indicating predictability beyond the deterministic range. The risk of SSW and SPV events relates to predicted NAO as expected, with NAO shifts of -6.5 and +4.8hPa in forecast members containing SSW and SPV events. Most striking of all is that forecast skill of the surface winter NAO vanishes from these hindcasts if members containing SSW events are excluded.This work was supported by the Joint DECC/Defra Met Office
Hadley Centre Climate Programme (GA01101), the UK Public
Weather Service research program and the European Union
Framework 7 SPECS project. The contribution of AYK is funded
by FMIâs tenure track program and the Academy of Finland
under grant 286298
Smoothed Particle Magnetohydrodynamics III. Multidimensional tests and the div B = 0 constraint
In two previous papers (Price & Monaghan 2004a,b) (papers I,II) we have
described an algorithm for solving the equations of Magnetohydrodynamics (MHD)
using the Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH) method. The algorithm uses
dissipative terms in order to capture shocks and has been tested on a wide
range of one dimensional problems in both adiabatic and isothermal MHD. In this
paper we investigate multidimensional aspects of the algorithm, refining many
of the aspects considered in papers I and II and paying particular attention to
the code's ability to maintain the div B = 0 constraint associated with the
magnetic field. In particular we implement a hyperbolic divergence cleaning
method recently proposed by Dedner et al. (2002) in combination with the
consistent formulation of the MHD equations in the presence of non-zero
magnetic divergence derived in papers I and II. Various projection methods for
maintaining the divergence-free condition are also examined. Finally the
algorithm is tested against a wide range of multidimensional problems used to
test recent grid-based MHD codes. A particular finding of these tests is that
in SPMHD the magnitude of the divergence error is dependent on the number of
neighbours used to calculate a particle's properties and only weakly dependent
on the total number of particles. Whilst many improvements could still be made
to the algorithm, our results suggest that the method is ripe for application
to problems of current theoretical interest, such as that of star formation.Comment: Here is the latest offering in my quest for a decent SPMHD algorithm.
26 pages, 15 figures, accepted for publication in MNRAS. Version with high
res figures available from
http://www.astro.ex.ac.uk/people/dprice/pubs/spmhd/spmhdpaper3.pd
The winds of young Solar-type stars in Coma Berenices and Hercules-Lyra
We present wind models of 10 young Solar-type stars in the Hercules-Lyra association and the Coma Berenices cluster aged around âŒ0.26 and âŒ0.58âGyr, respectively. Combined with five previously modelled stars in the Hyades cluster, aged âŒ0.63âGyr, we obtain a large atlas of 15 observationally based wind models. We find varied geometries, multi-armed structures in the equatorial plane, and a greater spread in quantities such as the angular momentum loss. In our models, we infer variation of a factor of âŒ6 in wind angular momentum loss JË and a factor of âŒ2 in wind mass-loss MË based on magnetic field geometry differences when adjusting for the unsigned surface magnetic flux. We observe a large variation factor of âŒ4 in wind pressure for an Earth-like planet; we attribute this to variations in the âmagnetic inclinationâ of the magnetic dipole axis with respect to the stellar axis of rotation. Within our models, we observe a tight correlation between unsigned open magnetic flux and angular momentum loss. To account for possible underreporting of the observed magnetic field strength we investigate a second series of wind models where the magnetic field has been scaled by a factor of 5. This gives MËâB0.4 and JËâB1.0 as a result of pure magnetic scaling
Improving smoothed particle hydrodynamics with an integral approach to calculating gradients
In this paper we develop and test a fully conservative SPH scheme based on a
tensor formulation that can be applied to simulate astrophysical systems. In
the proposed scheme, derivatives are calculated from an integral expression
that leads to a tensor (instead of a vectorial) estimation of gradients and
reduces to the standard formulation in the continuum limit. The new formulation
improves the interpolation of physical magnitudes, leading to a set of
conservative equations that resembles those of standard SPH. The resulting
scheme is verified using a variety of well-known tests, all of them simulated
in two dimensions. We also discuss an application of the proposed tensor method
to astrophysics by simulating the stability of a Sun-like polytrope calculated
in three dimensions.Comment: 15 pages, 12 figures, accepted for publication in Astronomy and
Astrophysics; minor changes due to language editin
SPHRAY: A Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics Ray Tracer for Radiative Transfer
We introduce SPHRAY, a Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH) ray tracer
designed to solve the 3D, time dependent, radiative transfer (RT) equations for
arbitrary density fields. The SPH nature of SPHRAY makes the incorporation of
separate hydrodynamics and gravity solvers very natural. SPHRAY relies on a
Monte Carlo (MC) ray tracing scheme that does not interpolate the SPH particles
onto a grid but instead integrates directly through the SPH kernels. Given
initial conditions and a description of the sources of ionizing radiation, the
code will calculate the non-equilibrium ionization state (HI, HII, HeI, HeII,
HeIII, e) and temperature (internal energy/entropy) of each SPH particle. The
sources of radiation can include point like objects, diffuse recombination
radiation, and a background field from outside the computational volume. The MC
ray tracing implementation allows for the quick introduction of new physics and
is parallelization friendly. A quick Axis Aligned Bounding Box (AABB) test
taken from computer graphics applications allows for the acceleration of the
raytracing component. We present the algorithms used in SPHRAY and verify the
code by performing all the test problems detailed in the recent Radiative
Transfer Comparison Project of Iliev et. al. The Fortran 90 source code for
SPHRAY and example SPH density fields are made available on a companion website
(www.sphray.org).Comment: 17 pages, 16 figures, submitted to MNRAS, comments welcome. source
code, high res. figures and examples can be found at http://www.sphray.or
Skillful long-range prediction of European and North American winters
This is the final version. Available from AGU via the DOI in this recordUntil recently, long-range forecast systems showed only modest levels of skill in predicting surface winter climate around the Atlantic Basin and associated fluctuations in the North Atlantic Oscillation at seasonal lead times. Here we use a new forecast system to assess seasonal predictability of winter North Atlantic climate. We demonstrate that key aspects of European and North American winter climate and the surface North Atlantic Oscillation are highly predictable months ahead. We demonstrate high levels of prediction skill in retrospective forecasts of the surface North Atlantic Oscillation, winter storminess, near-surface temperature, and wind speed, all of which have high value for planning and adaptation to extreme winter conditions. Analysis of forecast ensembles suggests that while useful levels of seasonal forecast skill have now been achieved, key sources of predictability are still only partially represented and there is further untapped predictability. Key Points The winter NAO can be skilfully predicted months ahead The signal-to-noise ratio of the predictable signal is anomalously low Predictions of the risk of regional winter extremes are possibleThis work was supported by the Joint DECC/Defra Met Office Hadley Centre Climate Programme (GA01101), the UK Public Weather Service research program, and the European Union Framework 7 SPECS project. Leon Hermanson was funded as part of his Research Fellowship by Willis as part of Willis Research Network (WRN)
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