Executive Summary : | Sun is the closest star to us and the prime driver of various space weather events. We are susceptible to energetic explosive occurrences since we are in the Sun’s extended atmosphere. Solar flares are magnetic phenomena and are so strong that they have the potential to interfere with radio communications, navigation, satellite electronics, and in the worst situations, knock down the earth’s electrical infrastructures. Our knowledge of the underlying physical reasons is quite limited. Not only are these rare and infrequent explosive events but there are also heating processes occurring on sub-resolution scales that maintain the high temperature of the solar corona and continuously accelerate the solar wind. It is widely accepted that solar magnetism is at the core of most phenomena and processes in the solar atmosphere. For instance, magnetic reconnection and MHD waves are thought to be two most probable mechanisms to explain solar atmospheric heating, an open problem in solar physics for several decades. The key to understanding solar atmospheric heating lies in the free energy of magnetic fields connecting the solar surface with the outer corona. This has not been thoroughly investigated due to observations lacking the detail required to identify fundamental plasma heating processes. MHD waves are excited near the solar surface due to the turbulent motions and then travel to higher layers, in particular, Alfven waves could be excited by rotational flows called vortex flows. Although their dissipation mechanism is yet to be explored, they are believed to be eventually damped and heating the plasma. Since solar plasma is turbulent, it consists of vortices occurring at various lengths and time scales. Moreover, both vorticity and magnetic field are pseudo vectors and obey a structurally similar evolution equation indicating a yet unexplored relationship between them. In view of this parallel, this project will investigate the fundamental nature of plasma in astrophysical systems by fully exploring vorticity at the highest achievable resolution and comparing them to magnetic field evolution using realistic numerical simulations. I will explore the physical properties of vortex flows in various magnetic environments and their influence on the background magnetic field and MHD wave excitation. To summarize, I will investigate the following hypothesis: Vortex flows excite torsional Alfven waves by twisting the magnetic flux bundles in the near-surface layers as the plasma beta is high in these layers. These MHD waves then travel to higher layers by virtue of magnetic tension. In the higher solar atmosphere, the magnetic field dominates the plasma dynamics and causes rotational flows. Also, there would be current sheets formed at their interfaces, leading to steady heating of the solar corona. Thus, I aim to unravel the interrelationship between vortex flows and magnetic fields in the context of solar physics. |