Evidence for Inhomogeneous Heating in the Solar Wind

Details Evidence for Inhomogeneous Heating in the Solar Wind Evidence for Inhomogeneous Heating in the Solar Wind

Dec 2010

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2010agufmsh51f..02g&link_type=abstract

American Geophysical Union, Fall Meeting 2010, abstract #SH51F-02

Physics

Plasma Physics

[7524] Solar Physics, Astrophysics, And Astronomy / Magnetic Fields, [7827] Space Plasma Physics / Kinetic And Mhd Theory, [7835] Space Plasma Physics / Magnetic Reconnection, [7863] Space Plasma Physics / Turbulence

Scientific paper

Solar wind observations and magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) simulations are used to probe the nature of turbulence heating and its relationship to inhomogeneity and coherent structures. In particular, the electron heat flux, electron temperature, and ion temperature are studied using ACE and Wind data. These heating diagnostics are also compared with numerically obtained estimates of the local dissipation density. In each case, the vector increments of the magnetic field, normalized to their standard deviation [1], are used to conditionally sample the data. Coherent structures, which are sources of inhomogeneity and intermittency in MHD turbulence, are found to be associated with enhancements in each of the heating related diagnostics. This supports the hypothesis that significant inhomogeneous heating occurs in the solar wind, connected with current sheets that are dynamically generated by MHD turbulence. Indeed, MHD simulations identify a subset of these coherent current sheets as magnetic reconnection sites. The possibility of using similar intermittency-related techniques to complement current magnetic reconnection identification methods is explored. [1] A. Greco et al, ApJ., 691, L111 (2009)

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