Nat Mathews / NASA GSFC
March 2, 2022, 3:30pm Eastern US Time
Abstract: The solar corona supports a variety of magnetic structures that constitute major drivers of space weather. Such a rope of magnetic field can twist and break to launch the plasma locked inside it in a Coronal Mass Ejection. The analysis and prediction of events of this nature is a major goal of the heliophysics community, and reconstructing the current state of the coronal magnetic field is a central component.
Determining the shape and structure of the magnetic fields arcing through the solar corona is a form of nonlinear inverse problem. The goal of this work is to provide a solid foundation for the construction of coronal inversion frameworks. First, a full working version of such an inverse framework is presented. For a variety of reasons, the parameterized forward model is deemed the component of this full inverse model most needing improvement. Subsequent work lays out a brand new methodology for computation of the forward model. The result is a construction that addresses many of the traditional issues around coronal field modeling. Future work extending the approach with Physics-Informed Neural Nets is discussed.</p>
Bio: Nat Mathews recently completed their PhD in applied mathematics with a focus on coronal physics at CU Boulder, advised by Natasha Flyer and Sarah Gibson. They are now a postdoctoral fellow at NASA Goddard.
