Numerical simulations of Alfv´en waves in the solar atmosphere with the PLUTO code

With an adaptation of the PLUTO code, we present a 2.5-dimensional Cartesian magnetohydrodynamic model with the invariant (∂/∂z = 0) coordinate z of propagating magnetohydrodynamic- gravity waves in the solar atmosphere, permeated by curved magnetic field and constant gravity field g = −gˆy. This code implements second-order accurate Godunov-type numerical scheme and MPI for high level of parallelization. We show that the inhomogeneous grid, originally built in the code, resolves well the system dynamics, resulting from the localized pulse initially launched in the transverse component of velocity Vz. We consider two cases for background magnetic field Be = [Bex,Bey,Bez] with its transverse component: (a) Bez = 0 and (b) Bez 6= 0. In case (a), the initial pulse triggers only Alfv´en waves, described solely by Vz. These waves drive by ponderomotive forces the magnetoacoustic waves, associated with perturbations in Vx and Vy. As a result of Bez 6= 0, in the (b) case, Alfv´en waves are coupled to their magnetoacoustic counterparts and all three velocity components are perturbed. We show that in this case the PLUTO code is accurate, its order being 1.97 and the numerically induced flow is of magnitude ≈ 0.1 km s−1, i.e. by a factor of at least ≈ 103 lower than the characteristic (Alfv´en) speed of the system. The errors, associated with the selenoidal condition, are low with the max |∇ ・ B| ≈ 1.3 ・ 10−10 Tesla km−1. We conclude that the PLUTO code copes well with resolving all spatial and temporal scales that appear in this numerically challenging system.