Three-dimensional MHD modeling of a CME propagating through a solar wind

We developed a three-dimensional (3D) magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) simulation code to reproduce the structure of a solar wind and the propagation of a coronal mass ejection (CME) through it. This code is constructed by a finite volume method based on a total variation diminishing (TVD) scheme using an unstructured grid system (Tanaka 1994). The grid system can avoid the singularity arising in the spherical coordinate system. In this study, we made an improvement of the code focused on the propagation of a CME through a solar wind, which extends a previous work done by Nakamizo et al. (2009). We first reconstructed a solar wind in a steady state from physical values obtained at 50 solar radii away from the Sun via an MHD tomography applied to interplanetary scintillation (IPS) data (Hayashi et al. 2003). We selected CR2057 and inserted a spheromak-type CME (Kataoka et al. 2009) into a reconstructed solar wind. As a result, we found that our simulation well captures the velocity, temperature and density profiles of an observed solar wind. Furthermore, we successfully reproduce the general characteristics of an interplanetary coronal mass ejection (ICME) obtained by the Helios 1/2 spacecraft (R. J. FORSYTH et al. 2006).