Network flux transport: concept and application to solar magnetism

Abstract

We have developed a method to efficiently simulate the dynamics of the magnetic flux in the solar network. We call this method Network Flux Transport (NFT). Implemented using a Spherical Centroidal Voronoi Tessellation (SCVT) based network model, magnetic flux is advected by photospheric plasma velocity fields according to the geometry of the SCVT model. We test NFT by simulating the magnetism of the Solar poles. The poles of the sun above 55 deg latitude are free from flux emergence from active regions or ephemeral regions. As such, they are ideal targets for a simplified simulation that relies on the strengths of the NFT model. This simulation method reproduces the magnetic and spatial distributions for the solar poles over two full solar cycles.