R. D’Amicis

ON THE OCCURRENCE OF THE THIRD-ORDER SCALING IN HIGH LATITUDE SOLAR WIND

The occurrence and nature of a nonlinear energy cascade within the intermediate scales of solar wind Alfvenic turbulence represents an important open issue. Using in situ measurements of fast, high latitude solar wind taken by the Ulysses spacecraft at solar minima, it is possible to show that a nonlinear energy cascade of imbalanced turbulence is only observed when the solar wind owns peculiar properties. These are the reduction of the local correlation between velocity and magnetic field (weak cross-helicity); the presence of large-scale velocity shears; and the steepening and extension down to low frequencies of the turbulent spectra. Our observations suggest the important role of both large-scale velocity and Alfvenicity of the field fluctuations for the validation of the Yaglom law in solar wind turbulence.

AN ANALYSIS OF MAGNETOHYDRODYNAMIC INVARIANTS OF MAGNETIC FLUCTUATIONS WITHIN INTERPLANETARY FLUX ROPES

A statistical analysis of magnetic flux ropes, identified by large-amplitude, smooth rotations of the magnetic field vector and a low level of both proton density and temperature, has been performed by computing the invariants of the ideal magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) equations, namely the magnetic helicity, the cross-helicity, and the total energy, via magnetic field and plasma fluctuations in the interplanetary medium. A technique based on the wavelet spectrograms of the MHD invariants allows the localization and characterization of those structures in both scales and time: it has been observed that flux ropes show, as expected, high magnetic helicity states (|σ m | [0.6: 1]), but extremely variable cross-helicity states (|σ c | [0: 0.8]), which, however, are not independent of the magnetic helicity content of the flux rope itself. The two normalized MHD invariants observed within the flux ropes tend indeed to distribute, neither trivially nor automatically, along the curve, thus suggesting that some constraint should exist between the magnetic and cross-helicity content of the structures. The analysis carried out has further showed that the flux rope properties are totally independent of their time duration and that they are detected either as a sort of interface between different portions of solar wind or as isolated structures embedded in the same stream.

CONDITIONED ANALYSIS OF HIGH-LATITUDE SOLAR WIND INTERMITTENCY

The solar wind is a turbulent medium displaying intermittency. Its intermittent features have been widely documented and studied, showing how the intermittent character is different in fast and slow wind. In this paper, a statistical conditioned analysis of the solar wind intermittency for a period of high-latitude fast solar wind is presented. In particular, the intermittent features are investigated as a function of the Alfvenic degree of fluctuations at a given scale. The results show that the main contribution to solar wind intermittency is due to non-Alfvenic structures, while Alfvenic increments are found to be characterized by a smaller level of intermittency than the previous ones. Furthermore, the lifetime statistics of Alfvenic periods are discussed in terms of a multiscale texture of randomly oriented flux tubes.

Observations of turbulence and anomalous scaling in the solar wind

In situ observations collected in the past decades, at different heliocentric distances and covering almost the whole range of heliographic latitudes, represent a unique source of knowledge ready to be exploited to better understand the nature and the behavior of solar wind MHD turbulence. In fact, the solar wind can be used as an ideal wind tunnel in order to test turbulence models and investigate scaling laws and multifractal models within the framework of the theory of complex dynamical systems. Moreover, an important role is played by the presence of the large scale interplanetary magnetic field which introduces a preferential direction in the solar wind. This direction is particularly relevant not only for the propagation of the fluctuations and their anisotropy but also for the topology of the structures convected by the wind. As a matter of fact, recent results have shown that a complete picture of solar wind turbulence goes well beyond the role played by inward and outward stochastic Alfvenic fluc...

Recent insights in solar wind MHD turbulence

In this short review we report about recent findings related to two fundamental points in the study of solar wind turbulence: a) the verification of the equivalent of the −4/5 law in the solar wind and b) the estimate of the energy cascade along the spectrum and its comparison with the heating rate necessary to heat the solar wind during its expansion as deduced from in‐situ measurements. As a matter of fact, a Yaglom‐like scaling relation has recently been found in both high‐latitude and in‐ecliptic data samples. However, analogous scaling law, suitably modified to take into account compressible fluctuations, has been observed in a much more extended fraction of the same data set recorded at high latitude. Thus, it seems that large scale density fluctuations, despite their low amplitude, play a major role in the basic scaling properties of turbulence. The compressive turbulent cascade, moreover, seems to be able to supply the energy needed to account for the local heating of the non‐adiabatic solar wind.