Can the Sun's convection zone drive currents into its corona?

Personnel: Dr. David Galloway, Professor Don Melrose, School of Physics, University of Sydney, Professor Yutaka Uchida, Science University of Tokyo, Japan, Professor Nigel Weiss, Department of Applied Maths and Theoretical Physics, University of Cambridge, UK.

Solar flares are thought to be caused by reconnection of magnetic fields and their associated currents in the solar corona. The currents have to be there to provide available energy over and above the current-free minimum energy state, but how and why they get there has not been convincingly demonstrated. In this project we are attempting to show that twisting motions in the turbulent convection zone below may provide a natural source for the currents and explain some of their properties. A consequence is that the event initiating any particular flare may have taken place at some depth below the surface of the Sun, hours, days, or even months earlier.