Assessment of parker solar probe data using Swasti-SW framework

Abstract

Solar wind streams have a large influence on the transmission of space weather drivers inside the heliosphere, resulting in geomagnetic storm activity. This serves as important contextual information. The heart of space weather forecasting lies in the anticipation of solar wind properties. In August 2018, NASA initiated the launch of the Parker Solar Probe (PSP) to explore the inner heliosphere.The key goal of the mission is to o↵er valuable insights into the mechanisms responsible for heating the solar corona, the acceleration and origin of the solar wind, and the generation of solar energetic particles. Numerous unanswered questions in these areas are expected to be addressed through the PSP mission.The PSP represents the pioneering in-situ investigation of the solar corona, with its nearest perihelion point currently located at a distance of 13.3 solar radii from the Sun, as of June 9, 2022.The objective of this investigation is to conduct a comparative analysis between in-situ solar wind observation of the Parker Solar Probe (PSP) and the simulation of solar wind outcomes from SWASTi-SW model. The main goal of this comparison is to evaluate the reliability and validity of the SWASTi-SW model in relation to the in-situ data. SWASTi-SW is a data-driven three-dimensional physics-based solar wind model. It is based on a two-domain approach, which includes a semi-empirical coronal domain and an inner heliospheric domain based on MHD. We provide our model’s forecast for the first and second perihelion of PSP, which happened in November 2018 and March 2019, respectively. New information on solar wind acceleration is revealed by contrasting the MHD results with the PSP measurements. The accuracy of the Air Force Data Assimilative Photospheric flux Transport-based estimations is further demonstrated by PSP measurements across the inner heliosphere. We found that SWASTi model works better for in-situ data with the adapt input magnetogram. Comparison of the SWASTi SW outputs with Parker Solar Probe in-situ observation can provide new understanding of solar wind acceleration.