Background image: courtesy of Miloslav Druckmueller
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Prof. Dr. Hardi Peter : Coronal Dynamics
Our main goal is to understand the structure, dynamics and heating of solar and stellar coronae. These outer atmospheres are heated to temperatures of more than a million degrees and show a large spatial and temporal variability. To reach our goal we perform magnetohydrodynamics models of the upper solar atmosphere, synthesize the coronal emission to be expected from the computational domain, and compare this to actual coronal observations acquired in extreme ultraviolet and X-ray wavelengths.

Dr. THOMAS WIEGELMANN : Solar Corona in 3D
The solar corona is dominated and structured by the magnetic field. In lowest order we can neglect all non-magnetic forces and model the solar corona with a force-free model. Force-free means that the Lorentz-force vanishes. This is equivalent to the assumption that the electric current density and magnetic field vector are parallel. In the generic case the relation between current density and magnetic field is not linear and sophisticated numerical codes are required to compute the nonlinear force-free coronal magnetic field model. As input the model requires measurements of the photospheric magnetic field vector (e.g. from SDO/HMI, Hinode/SOT, SUNRISE/IMAX).