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Recent insights in solar wind MHD turbulence

Abstract:

In this short review we report about recent findings related to two fundamental points in the study of solar wind turbulence: a) the verification of the equivalent of the -4/5 law in the solar wind and b) the estimate of the energy cascade along the spectrum and its comparison with the heating rate necessary to heat the solar wind during its expansion as deduced from in-situ measurements. As a matter of fact, a Yaglom-like scaling relation has recently been found in both high-latitude and in-ecliptic data samples. However, analogous scaling law, suitably modified to take into account compressible fluctuations, has been observed in a much more extended fraction of the same data set recorded at high latitude. Thus, it seems that large scale density fluctuations, despite their low amplitude, play a major role in the basic scaling properties of turbulence. The compressive turbulent cascade, moreover, seems to be able to supply the energy needed to account for the local heating of the non-adiabatic solar wind. © 2008 American Institute of Physics.