On the applicability of Taylor's hypothesis in streaming magnetohydrodynamic turbulence

Abstract

We examine the range of applicability of Taylor's hypothesis used in observations of magnetic turbulence in the solar wind. We do not refer to turbulence theory. We simply ask whether in a turbulent magnetohydrodynamic flow the observed magnetic frequency spectrum can be interpreted as mapping of the wavenumber turbulence into the stationary spacecraft frame. In addition to the known restrictions on the angle of propagation with respect to the fluctuation spectrum and the question on the wavenumber dependence of the frequency in turbulence which we briefly review, we show that another restriction concerns the inclusion or exclusion of turbulent fluctuations in the velocity field. Taylor's hypothesis in application to magnetic (MHD) turbulence encounters its strongest barriers here. It is applicable to magnetic turbulence only when the turbulent velocity fluctuations can practically be completely neglected against the bulk flow speed. For low flow speeds the transformation becomes rather involved. This account makes even no use of the additional scale dependence of the turbulent frequency, viz. the existence of a "turbulent dispersion relation".

arXiv comment31 pages, 3 figures, submitted to Earth, Planets & Space

References in corpus (13)

• Universality of solar wind turbulent spectrum from MHD to electron scales
• Dependence of solar wind power spectra on the direction of the local mean magnetic field
• Scaling of the electron dissipation range of solar wind turbulence
• New insight into short wavelength solar wind fluctuations from Vlasov theory
• The Violation of the Taylor Hypothesis in Measurements of Solar Wind Turbulence
• Frame Dependence of the Electric Field Spectrum of Solar Wind Turbulence
• Applicability of Taylor's hypothesis in thermally driven turbulence
• A Modified Version of Taylor's Hypothesis for Solar Probe Plus Observations
• On the spatio-temporal behavior of magnetohydrodynamic turbulence in a magnetized plasma
• Experimental study of Taylor's hypothesis in a turbulent soap film
• Remarks on nonlinear relation among phases and frequencies in modulational instabilities of parallel propagating Alfven waves
• Temporal surrogates of spatial turbulent statistics: the Taylor hypothesis revisted
• The usefulness of Poynting's theorem in magnetic turbulence

Cited by in corpus (4)

• The evolution of compressible solar wind turbulence in the inner heliosphere: PSP, THEMIS and MAVEN observations
• Observational quantification of three-dimensional anisotropies and scalings of space plasma turbulence at kinetic scales
• Conditions for proton temperature anisotropy to drive instabilities in the solar wind
• On the ion-inertial range density power spectra in solar wind turbulence