Cooper Downs - Research
Mountain image

Research


Current Work: "Connecting and Constraining Data-Driven Solar Atmosphere Models Through Observations: Studying EUV Emission in Realistic Flare-CME Events"

This will be my main research project for my recent 3-year NASA Earth and Space Science Fellowship (NESSF08) Award for Heliophysics Research (Advisor: Ilia Roussev). In short the goal is to study Extreme Ultraviolet Emission from the solar atmosphere using a 3-D global simulation tool for the entire corona in context of actual events that we observe. The primary science driver is the study of EIT waves, which are large-scale waves propagating along the solar disk and are related to the impulse from Flare-CME event

Some great images and movies of the sun as seen in the EUV regime can be found at the STEREO and SOHO mission websites. Also, here is a link to the Space Weather Modeling Framework, a powerful and highly flexible tool that has been used to study a variety of magnetic environments in the Solar System. This is the simulation tool that I am currently using and will be modifying as part of my study.

Past Projects:

2nd 699 Project (2007-2008): Adding a prescription for EUV emission to a global 3-D coronal model used to study the complex conditions of Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs). (Advisor: Ilia Roussev)

paper: Studying EUV Emission in Realistic Flare-CME Events in the Solar Atmosphere.

poster: Summary of project presented as a poster at the 2008 SHINE conference.


1st 699 Project (2007): Using a simple model to investigate how the large fraction of neutral material in magnetic regions of the photosphere can produce dynamic effects via a strong partial pressure gradient. (Advisor: Jeff Kuhn)

paper: Neutral and Molecular Hydrogen Dynamics in Magnetic Regions of the Solar Photosphere

poster: Dated, but gives a motivation and shows the work in progress as of the Summer 2007 AAS meeting


My undergraduate Physics thesis at UC Santa Cruz (2006):

paper: Local Structure Studies of Two Novel Materials Using EXAFS (Advisor: Frank (Bud) Bridges)