Abstract
We describe a newly developed code for the extrapolation of nonlinear force-free coronal magnetic fields in spherical coordinates. The program uses measured vector magnetograms on the solar photosphere as input and solves the force-free equations in the solar corona. The method is based on an optimization principle and the heritage of the newly developed code is a corresponding method in Cartesian geometry. We test the newly developed code with the help of a semi-analytic solution and rate the quality of our reconstruction qualitatively by magnetic field line plots and quantitatively with a number of comparison metrics. We find that we can reconstruct the original test field with high accuracy. The method is fast if the computation is limited to low co-latitudes (say 30°≤θ≤150°), but it becomes significantly slower if the polar regions are included.
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Wiegelmann, T. Computing Nonlinear Force-Free Coronal Magnetic Fields in Spherical Geometry. Sol Phys 240, 227–239 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11207-006-0266-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11207-006-0266-3