2013/04/03 by F. S. Mozer, C. H. K. Chen · 2 citations
Engineering · Physics and Astronomy · #Amplitude #Electric field #Field (mathematics) #Flattening #Fluid dynamics and aerodynamics studies #Ionosphere and magnetosphere dynamics #Kinetic energy #Solar and Space Plasma Dynamics #Solar wind #Spectral density #Turbulence #astro-ph.SR #physics.plasm-ph #physics.space-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1088/2041-8205/768/1/l10
published as Astrophys. J. 768 L10 (2013)
arxiv created 2013/04/03 · openalex publication_date 2013/04/16 · arxiv updated 2013/04/18 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
By searching through more than 10 satellite years of THEMIS and Cluster data, 3 reliable examples of parallel electric field turbulence in the undisturbed solar wind have been found. The perpendicular and parallel electric field spectra in these examples have similar shapes and amplitudes, even at large scales (frequencies below the ion gyroscale), where Alfvénic turbulence with no parallel electric field component is thought to dominate. The spectra of the parallel electric field fluctuations are power laws with exponents near −5/3 below the ion scales (∼0.1 Hz), and with a flattening of the spectrum in the vicinity of this frequency. At small scales (above a few Hz), the spectra are steeper than −5/3 with values in the range of −2.1 to −2.8. These steeper slopes are consistent with expectations for kinetic Alfvén turbulence, although their amplitude relative to the perpendicular fluctuations is larger than expected.