The large-scale structure of the heliosphere: a new modelling approach

Abstract

The modelling of the large-scale structure of the heliosphere has made significant progress during recent years. Following hydrodynamic two-fluid approaches taking into account protons and neutral hydrogen, pick-up ions and cosmic rays were included and magnetohydrodynamic models were formulated. The present-day models are, nonetheless, still not capable to describe a realistic three-dimensional heliosphere, simultaneously including several particle populations as well as the heliospheric and the interstellar magnetic field. However, the recent progress regarding the development of algorithms and codes for a parallel computing architecture offer the opportunity to make further significant progress. In particular, it will be possible to improve the realistic modelling of the effect of changes in the local interstellar medium on the structure of the heliosphere and, in turn, on Earth, which has received increased attention during recent years. We will report about a new model formulation employing the ZEUS code, that however, is used in a parallelized fashion using the Message Passing Interface (MPI).