Abstract
We reexamine the well-known polytropic flow-tube model of the expanding solar corona, and find that as the divergence of the flow tube increases the expansion speed increases throughout the flow, over a stated parameter range. Corresponding to a specified flow-tube geometry the terminal speed of the fluid may be far in excess of the value corresponding to purely spherically symmetric flow. The implications of the results for the modelling of high-speed streams emanating from coronal holes are discussed.
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References
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On leave from Dept. of Mathematics and Statistics, Memorial University of Newfoundland, St. John's, Newfoundland A1B 3X7, Canada.
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Summers, D. Flow-tube dynamics and coronal holes. Sol Phys 85, 93–96 (1983). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00148260
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00148260