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Intermittency in Solar Wind Turbulence From Fluid to Kinetic Scales

机译:从流体尺度到动力学尺度的太阳风湍流间歇性

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Solar wind is a highly turbulent medium exhibiting fluctuations ranging from the solar sidereal rotation period to proton and electron gyroperiods. Their amplitudes show remarkable scalings with frequency across more than seven decades, suggesting a self‐similar nature for these fluctuations. However, these fluctuations are not globally scale invariant and require a multifractal approach. Multifractality is closely related to intermittency, a phenomenon that has been studied in the solar wind for more than three decades. We now have a rather complete picture of the nature of the most intermittent events and the radial/latitudinal dependence of this phenomenon in the heliosphere. Parallel shocks, slow mode shocks or tangential discontinuities/current sheets identified as the border between adjacent flux tubes are the most intermittent structures within the low‐frequency turbulence. It is more complicated and fascinating to understand the nature of intermittent events at kinetic scales since they are directly related to dissipative phenomena and might be the key to understanding the dissipation mechanisms in the collisionless solar wind plasma. Unfortunately, we still do not have adequate plasma observations at kinetic scales to work on, but several studies, mostly numeric, have addressed this topic suggesting that discontinuities, small‐scale current sheets, and sites which are candidates for reconnection events might be regions where dissipative phenomena are at work with consequent plasma heating and acceleration. This review is intended to provide the reader with a quick overview on the past and most recent understanding of intermittency phenomenon in the solar wind from fluid to kinetic scales. Plain Language Summary Turbulence in ordinary fluid appears as an irregular and chaotic state of motion, both in space and time. However, there are structures which have a lifetime longer than the surrounding stochastic fluctuations, that is, coherent structures. These structures, which appear like vortices of all sizes, are the sites where the kinetic energy of the fluid is dissipated. While stochastic fluctuations around these structures are described by a Gaussian statistics, vortices represent intense events not obedient to the same statistics. They can be considered regions characterized by intense fluctuations surrounded by regular (“normal”) fluctuations. Coherent structures are not evenly distributed within the fluid, which alternates regions of low activity to regions of intense activity in an intermittent fashion. Similarly to ordinary fluids, a magnetofluid like the solar wind exhibits an intermittent behavior. Numerical experiments devoted to reproducing solar wind turbulence indicate that small‐scale coherent structures, not yet fully accessible to in situ plasma measurements, represent candidate sites where turbulence energy could be dissipated to eventually heat the plasma. Solar wind heating is still an open problem, and understanding the nature of these coherent structures is the key to solving it. This paper aims to summarize past and present efforts in this direction.
机译:太阳风是一种高度湍流的介质,其波动范围从太阳的恒星自转周期到质子和电子陀螺仪。它们的振幅显示了超过七十年的频率显着缩放比例,表明这些波动具有自相似的性质。但是,这些波动不是全局尺度不变的,需要多重分形方法。多重分形与间歇性密切相关,这种现象已经在太阳风中研究了三十多年。现在,我们对最间歇性事​​件的性质以及此现象在日球层中的径向/纬度依赖性有了较为完整的了解。在低频湍流中,平行震荡,慢模式震荡或切线间断/电流表被确定为相邻通量管之间的边界,是最间歇的结构。了解动力学尺度上间歇性事件的性质更加复杂和有趣,因为它们与耗散现象直接相关,并且可能是了解无碰撞太阳风等离子体中耗散机制的关键。不幸的是,我们仍然没有足够的动力学尺度的等离子体观测值来进行研究,但是一些研究(大部分是数值研究)已经解决了这一问题,这表明不连续性,小电流表和重连接事件的候选地点可能是耗散现象随着等离子体的加热和加速而起作用。这篇综述旨在为读者提供从流体尺度到动力学尺度的太阳风间歇性现象的过去和最近理解的快速概述。简单的语言摘要普通流体中的湍流在空间和时间上都表现为不规则且混乱的运动状态。但是,存在寿命比周围的随机波动长的结构,即相干结构。这些结构看起来像各种大小的旋涡,是流体动能消散的位置。尽管这些结构周围的随机波动是由高斯统计描述的,但涡旋代表的是强烈的事件,并非遵循相同的统计。可以将它们视为特征在于剧烈波动并被规则(“正常”)波动包围的区域。相干结构没有均匀地分布在流体中,从而以间歇的方式将低活性区域替换为高活性区域。与普通流体相似,像太阳风一样的磁流体表现出间歇性行为。专门用于重现太阳风湍流的数值实验表明,尚不能进行原位等离子体测量完全接近的小规模相干结构代表了可以消散湍流能量最终加热等离子体的候选位置。太阳风采暖仍然是一个悬而未决的问题,了解这些连贯结构的性质是解决它的关键。本文旨在总结在此方向上的过去和现在的努力。

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