Data-driven Radiative Magnetohydrodynamics simulations with the MURaM code

The horizontal electric field that is derived from the full velocity and magnetic vectors is implemented at the photospheric (bottom) boundary to drive the induction equation. The energy equation accounts for thermal conduction along magnetic fields, optically thin radiative loss, and heating of coronal plasma by viscous and resistive dissipation, which allows for a realistic presentation of the thermodynamic properties of coronal plasma that are key to predicting the observational features of solar active regions and eruptions.

To validate this method, the photospheric data from a comprehensive radiative MHD simulation of solar eruption (the ground truth) are used to drive a series of numerical experiments. The data-driven simulation reproduces the accumulation of free magnetic energy over the course of flux emergence in the ground truth with an error of 3%. The onset time is approximately 8 minutes delayed compared to the ground truth.