CMX Student/Postdoc Seminar

The arcs visible in our sun's atmosphere are some of the most awe-inspiring natural spectacles and their visual depiction is of great interest in scientific visualization, special effects, and games. These visually prominent features can be modeled as magnetic filaments whose shape is governed by the magnetohydrostatic equation. In this talk I will show how to procedurally generate solar atmospheres by representing the magnetic filaments as curves with thickness. These curves provide a Lagrangian representation and their initial configuration can be generated from magnetic flux given as a scalar texture on the sun's surface. Subsequently, the shape of the filaments can be determined based on a variational formulation which is derived from a geometric interpretation of the problem.