Magnetohydrodynamic Turbulence Simulations as a Testing Ground for PUNCH

Abstract

The Polarimeter to UNify the Corona and Heliosphere (PUNCH) will image macroscopic features of the inner heliosphere and also admit sufficiently high spatial resolution to probe scales of turbulence within the upper end of the inertial range, close to the integral scale. As PUNCH is an imager, its measurements will relate differently to the underlying turbulent environment of the outer corona and inner heliosphere from more familiar in situ samples. We present a numerical study that combines magnetohydrodynamic simulations of turbulence together with FORWARD-modeling synthesis of white-light data via the FORWARD code. We show that (i) the “usual” turbulence scalings are modified by the integration along the LOS in an optically thin medium, and (ii) those scalings are still linked to the original properties of the turbulent field. This study is a first step in the process of analyzing and understanding the unprecedented information that PUNCH will provide.