PhD candidate
Research group | Rosseland Centre for Solar Physics (RoCS)
Main supervisor | Boris Gudiksen
Co-supervisor | Mats Carlsson
Affiliation | Institute of Theoretical Astrophysics, UiO
Contact | georgche@uio.no
Short bio
George studied their bachelors and masters in mathematics at the University of St Andrews, Scotland, specialising in geophysical fluid dynamics and solar theory. George wrote their thesis on the theory of volcanic plume models, and studied a secondary project on flux emergence models on the solar surface in Fortran90. For their contributions to academic and university life, George was awarded the prestigious St Andrews principal's medal.
Research interests and hobbies
George is interested in any and all fluid-dynamical things! Specifically,George takes an interest in the effects of turbulence to a system, for example to the suppression of heat transfer in solar flares. George gets incredibly excited by clouds, as visualisations of the complex fluid dynamics that occurs in our own atmosphere!
Outside of work, George immerses themselves in music, by playing keys with a storband and accompanying a choir. George also loves being outdoors, whether rowing on the water, or cycling through the mountains.
CompSci project
WholeSun: New codes and frameworks for Exascale computing for multi-scale simulations
George shall research new computational techniques to be developed within the Bifrost and Dispatch solar modelling frameworks. George's first publication shall look at heat transfer from active regions in the solar corona, adapting the already implemented Spitzer conductivity terms in Bifrost to include the option for suppression in the presence of turbulence. In the future, George shall investigate wave-characteristics within simulations, to gain greater insight into the wave processes within the transition region and solar corona. This project shall gear codes towards the next era of supercomputing, and incorporate High Performance Computing techniques to update the Bifrost and Dispatch frameworks.
Doctoral thesis
Quantifying energy transfer in the solar atmosphere
Just like in the oceans and atmosphere on Earth, a vast range of waves exist in the plasma of the solar atmosphere. Understanding the transfer of energy via these magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) waves has important implications for our theory on the heating of the upper solar atmosphere (coronal heating) and the prediction of geomagnetic storms by monitoring the solar wind. Despite extensive theory and simulations, the detection of waves in realistic simulations still presents a large challenge, due to wave interaction, conversion, dissipation and numerical artefacts: it is like finding a needle in a haystack full of needle-like objects.
Through the development of a new method for detecting wave activity in simulations, I have demonstrated that different magnetic structures can inhibit and prohibit the propagation of waves, including the dominant oscillations at 3.5 mHz and 5 mHz, which have previously been detected as “global modes” in both observations and simulations. Specifically, we find that twisted magnetic features called swirls enable the transport of magnetoacoustic waves at 3.5 mHz waves to the upper atmosphere, whilst in the absence of swirls, plasma motions in the chromosphere enhance the wave activity at 5 mHz. These results lead to exciting prospects in the realm of quantifying the energy deposit to the upper atmosphere in different solar regimes.
Publications
CompSci publications
- Sondre Vik Furuseth, George Cherry, Juan Martinez-Sykora (2024) “On thermal conduction in the solar atmosphere: An analytical solution for nonlinear diffusivity without compact support” Astronomy and Astrophysics 691, A79 1–10
https://doi.org/10.1051/0004-6361/202451707 | Full text in Research Archive - George Cherry, Mikolaj Szydlarski, and Boris Vilhelm Gudiksen (2024) “Implementation of thermal conduction energy transfer models in the Bifrost solar atmosphere MHD code” Astronomy and Astrophysics 692, A139 1–10
https://doi.org/10.1051/0004-6361/202452012 | Full text in Research Archive - George Cherry, Boris Vilhelm Gudiksen, and Adam J. Finley (2025) “Detection of wave activity within a realistic 3D magnetohydrodynamic quiet Sun simulation” Astronomy and Astrophysics 700, A276 1–11
https://doi.org/10.1051/0004-6361/202555110 | Full text in Research Archive - George Cherry, Boris Vilhelm Gudiksen, and Adam J. Finley (2026) “Decomposing wave activity in the solar atmosphere: shocks, jets and swirls in the quiet sun” Astronomy and Astrophysics 705, A42 1–12
https://doi.org/10.1051/0004-6361/202557226 | Full text in Research Archive
Previous publications
None.
