2011/05/31 by C. H. K. Chen, S. D. Bale, C. Salem +2 · 4 citations
Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology · Physics and Astronomy · #Computational physics #Electric field #Geomagnetism and Paleomagnetism Studies #Geometry #Ionosphere and magnetosphere dynamics #Magnetic field #Mechanics #Physics #Scaling #Solar and Space Plasma Dynamics #Solar wind #Spectral index #Spectral line #Turbulence #astro-ph.EP #physics.plasm-ph #physics.space-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1088/2041-8205/737/2/l41
published as Astrophys. J. 737 L41 (2011)
openalex publication_date 2011/08/04 · arxiv created 2011/08/05 · arxiv updated 2012/08/20 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/06
We present the first survey of electric field data using the ARTEMIS spacecraft in the solar wind to study inertial range turbulence. It was found that the average perpendicular spectral index of the electric field depends on the frame of measurement. In the spacecraft frame it is −5/3, which matches the magnetic field due to the large solar wind speed in Lorentz transformation. In the mean solar wind frame, the electric field is primarily due to the perpendicular velocity fluctuations and has a spectral index slightly shallower than −3/2, which is close to the scaling of the velocity. These results are an independent confirmation of the difference in scaling between the velocity and magnetic field, which is not currently well understood. The spectral index of the compressive fluctuations was also measured and found to be close to −5/3, suggesting that they are not only passive to the velocity but may also interact nonlinearly with the magnetic field.