Predicting solar cycle 24 with a solar dynamo model

Whether the upcoming cycle 24 of solar activity will be strong or not is being hotly debated. The solar cycle is produced by a complex dynamo mechanism. We model the last few solar cycles by `feeding' observational data of the Sun's polar magnetic field into our solar dynamo model. Our results fit the observed sunspot numbers of cycles 21-23 extremely well and predict that cycle~24 will be about 35% weaker than cycle~23.Comment: 10 pages 1 table 3 figure

The origin of grand minima in the sunspot cycle

One of the most striking aspects of the 11-year sunspot cycle is that there have been times in the past when some cycles went missing, a most well-known example of this being the Maunder minimum during 1645-1715. Analyses of cosmogenic isotopes (C14 and Be10) indicated that there were about 27 grand minima in the last 11,000 yr, implying that about 2.7% of the solar cycles had conditions appropriate for forcing the Sun into grand minima. We address the question how grand minima are produced and specifically calculate the frequency of occurrence of grand minima from a theoretical dynamo model. We assume that fluctuations in the poloidal field generation mechanism and the meridional circulation produce irregularities of sunspot cycles. Taking these fluctuations to be Gaussian and estimating the values of important parameters from the data of last 28 solar cycles, we show from our flux transport dynamo model that about 1-4% of the sunspot cycles may have conditions suitable for inducing grand minima.Comment: Accepted for publication in Physical Review Letter

On a Generalized Fifth-Order Integrable Evolution Equation and its Hierarchy

A general form of the fifth-order nonlinear evolution equation is considered. Helmholtz solution of the inverse variational problem is used to derive conditions under which this equation admits an analytic representation. A Lennard type recursion operator is then employed to construct a hierarchy of Lagrangian equations. It is explicitly demonstrated that the constructed system of equations has a Lax representation and two compatible Hamiltonian structures. The homogeneous balance method is used to derive analytic soliton solutions of the third- and fifth-order equations.Comment: 16 pages, 1 figur

Study of implosion in an attractive Bose-Einstein condensate

By solving the Gross-Pitaevskii equation analytically and numerically, we reexamine the implosion phenomena that occur beyond the critical value of the number of atoms of an attractive Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) with cigar-shape trapping geometry. We theoretically calculate the critical number of atoms in the condensate by using Ritz's variational optimization technique and investigate the stability and collapse dynamics of the attractive BEC by numerically solving the time dependent Gross-Pitavskii equation