Intermittency, scaling and the Fokker-Planck approach to fluctuations of the solar wind bulk plasma parameters as seen by the WIND spacecraft

Abstract

The solar wind provides a natural laboratory for observations of MHD turbulence over extended temporal scales. Here, we apply a model independent method of differencing and rescaling to identify self-similarity in the Probability Density Functions (PDF) of fluctuations in solar wind bulk plasma parameters as seen by the WIND spacecraft. Whereas the fluctuations of speed v and IMF magnitude B are multi-fractal, we find that the fluctuations in the ion density rho, energy densities B^2 and rho v^2 as well as MHD-approximated Poynting flux vB^2 are mono-scaling on the timescales up to ~26 hours. The single curve, which we find to describe the fluctuations PDF of all these quantities up to this timescale, is non-Gaussian. We model this PDF with two approaches-- Fokker-Planck, for which we derive the transport coefficients and associated Langevin equation, and the Castaing distribution that arises from a model for the intermittent turbulent cascade.

arXiv comment8 pages, 11 figures. APS format accepted to be published at PRE. Changes include the discussion of the functional form of tails for rescaled PDFs. Introductions has been modified as well. New figure 7 has been added

References in corpus (1)

• Finite size scaling in the solar wind magnetic field energy density as seen by WIND

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