English

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

Astrophysics 2015-06-24 v1

Abstract

Statistical properties of the interplanetary magnetic field fluctuations can provide an important insight into the solar wind turbulent cascade. Recently, analysis of the Probability Density Functions (PDF) of the velocity and magnetic field fluctuations has shown that these exhibit non-Gaussian properties on small time scales while large scale features appear to be uncorrelated. Here we apply the finite size scaling technique to explore the scaling of the magnetic field energy density fluctuations as seen by WIND. We find a single scaling sufficient to collapse the curves over the entire investigated range. The rescaled PDF follow a non Gaussian distribution with asymptotic behavior well described by the Gamma distribution arising from a finite range Levy walk. Such mono scaling suggests that a Fokker-Planck approach can be applied to study the PDF dynamics. These results strongly suggest the existence of a common, nonlinear process onthe time scale up to ~26 hours.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.astro-ph/0204287,
  title  = {Finite size scaling in the solar wind magnetic field energy density as seen by WIND},
  author = {Bogdan Hnat and Sandra Chapman and George Rowlands and Nicholas Watkins and William Farrell},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:astro-ph/0204287},
  year   = {2015}
}

Comments

4 pages, 5 figures. In press, Geophysical Research Letters