Solar Wind Mass-Loading Due to Dust in the Vicinity of the Sun

Collisionless shocks due to mass-loading were first discussed to describe the solar wind flow around a cometary atmosphere, showing its choking effects on the flow. Recent observations have led to an increased interest in mass-loading occurring in the solar corona, due to sun-grazing comets and also due to collisional debris production by sunward migrating interplanetary dust particles. Using one-dimensional simulations with a hydrodynamic model we have shown the impact on the solar wind from abrupt mass-loading in the coronal region. Full three-dimensional MHD simulations using the Block-Adaptive-Tree-Solarwind-Roe-Upwind-Scheme (BATS-R-US) accomplish more to mimic specific events applicable to modeling the mass-loaded coronal wind caused by the presence of a sun-grazing comet, for example.