Simulating Interactions Between Coronal Mass Ejections

Coronal mass ejections (CMEs) launch large quantities of dense plasma and magnetic fields into the interplanetary medium. Under the right conditions these CMEs can reach the Earth and cause negative consequences. Such events can happen in succession and influence each other’s propagation, and these interactions between CMEs can increase their potential to do damage. We discern CME candidates from in-situ solar wind data, simulate their propagation and evolution, and verify them with remote sensing observations of the Sun. We treat the plasma as an ideal fluid and use Bernoulli’s equation to analytically create a 1-dimensional model (velocity (v) and density (ρ) time-profiles) for CMEs from Earth to an injection radius of 10 R⦿ from the Sun. We recreate the solar data with a numerical model based on Euler’s equations, and analyze the v and ρ time-profiles to look for solar wind sources from the Sun. We then compare the 1 AU synthetic time-profiles to the in-situ data to verify the accuracy of the numerical model’s results. We use remote-sensing observations to relate sources (such as CMEs and open magnetic field regions) to our v and ρ time-profiles at the injection radius. We also look for possible radio emissions during the time and distance in which interactions were predicted.This work was funded by the NSF-REU Solar Physics program at SAO, grant number AGS-1850750