Magnetohydrodynamics and visualisation of scientific data

This unit briefly discusses plasma physics, covering single particle motion and kinetic plasma theory, and then introduces the fluid description to derive the equations of magnetohydrodynamics (MHD). It then explores basic MHD, including ideal and dissipative MHD, magnetohydrostatic, and MHD waves. A detailed spectral theory of MHD waves is developed. You are required to understand the dynamics of general plasma flows, wave modes in plasmas, instabilities, particle acceleration, and shocks.

Applications will be made to solar structures and observations.

Stability and dynamics of solar features from the photosphere to corona will be analysed/simulated. These studies will be accompanied by the state-of-art visualisation techniques such as Python VTK, Mayavi and Paraview. Algorithms and ODE/PDE solvers to allow for Interactive Visualisation will be an essential part of our tasks.