Anisotropy of imbalanced Alfvénic turbulence in fast solar wind

A Quarter Century of Wind Spacecraft Discoveries

The Wind spacecraft, launched on November 1, 1994, is a critical element in NASA’s Heliophysics System Observatory (HSO)—a fleet of spacecraft created to understand the dynamics of the Sun‐Earth system. The combination of its longevity (>25 years in service), its diverse complement of instrumentation, and high resolution and accurate measurements has led to it becoming the “standard candle” of solar wind measurements. Wind has over 55 selectable public data products with over ∼1,100 total data variables (including OMNI data products) on SPDF/CDAWeb alone. These data have led to paradigm shifting results in studies of statistical solar wind trends, magnetic reconnection, large‐scale solar wind structures, kinetic physics, electromagnetic turbulence, the Van Allen radiation belts, coronal mass ejection topology, interplanetary and interstellar dust, the lunar wake, solar radio bursts, solar energetic particles, and extreme astrophysical phenomena such as gamma‐ray bursts. This review introduces the mission and instrument suites then discusses examples of the contributions by Wind to these scientific topics that emphasize its importance to both the fields of heliophysics and astrophysics.

Wind has made seminal advances to the fields of astrophysics, turbulence, kinetic physics, magnetic reconnection, and the radiation belts

Wind pioneered the study of the source and evolution of solar radio emissions below 15 MHz

Wind revolutionized our understanding of coronal mass ejections, their internal magnetic structure, and evolution

MHD turbulence

We review the current status of research in MHD turbulence theory and numerical experiments and their applications to astrophysics and solar science. We introduce general tools for studying turbulence, basic turbulence models, MHD equations and their wave modes. Subsequently, we cover the theories and numerics of Alfvénic turbulence, imbalanced turbulence, small-scale dynamos and models and numerics for supersonic MHD turbulence.

Acceleration of particles in imbalanced magnetohydrodynamic turbulence

The present work investigates the acceleration of test particles, relevant to the solar-wind problem, in balanced and imbalanced magnetohydrodynamic turbulence (terms referring here to turbulent states possessing zero and nonzero cross helicity, respectively). These turbulent states, obtained numerically by prescribing the injection rates for the ideal invariants, are evolved dynamically with the particles. While the energy spectrum for balanced and imbalanced states is known, the impact made on particle heating is a matter of debate, with different considerations giving different results. By performing direct numerical simulations, resonant and nonresonant particle accelerations are automatically considered and the correct turbulent phases are taken into account. For imbalanced turbulence, it is found that the acceleration rate of charged particles is reduced and the heating rate diminished. This behavior is independent of the particle gyroradius, although particles that have a stronger adiabatic motion (smaller gyroradius) tend to experience a larger heating.

Ion kinetic scale in the solar wind observed

This Letter shows the first results from the solar wind monitor onboard the Spektr-R spacecraft which measures plasma moments with a time resolution of 31 ms. This high-time resolution allows us to make direct observations of solar wind turbulence below ion kinetic length scales. We present examples of the frequency spectra of the density, velocity, and thermal velocity. Our study reveals that although these parameters exhibit the same behavior at the magnetohydrodynamic scale, their spectra are remarkably different at the kinetic scale.

Nonaxisymmetric anisotropy of solar wind turbulence as a direct test for models of magnetohydrodynamic turbulence

Single point spacecraft observations of the turbulent solar wind flow exhibit a characteristic nonaxisymmetric anisotropy that depends sensitively on the perpendicular power spectral exponent. We use this nonaxisymmetric anisotropy as a function of wave vector direction to test models of MHD turbulence. Using Ulysses magnetic field observations in the fast, quiet polar solar wind we find that the Goldreich-Sridhar model of MHD turbulence is not consistent with the observed anisotropy, whereas the observations are well reproduced by the "slab+2D" model. The Goldreich-Sridhar model alone cannot account for the observations unless an additional component is also present.

Nonaxisymmetric anisotropy of solar wind turbulence

A key prediction of turbulence theories is frame-invariance, and in magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) turbulence, axisymmetry of fluctuations with respect to the background magnetic field. Paradoxically the power in fluctuations in the turbulent solar wind are observed to be ordered with respect to the bulk macroscopic flow as well as the background magnetic field. Here, nonaxisymmetry across the inertial and dissipation ranges is quantified using in situ observations from Cluster. The observed inertial range nonaxisymmetry is reproduced by a "fly through" sampling of a direct numerical simulation of MHD turbulence. Furthermore, fly through sampling of a linear superposition of transverse waves with axisymmetric fluctuations generates the trend in nonaxisymmetry with power spectral exponent. The observed nonaxisymmetric anisotropy may thus simply arise as a sampling effect related to Taylor's hypothesis and is not related to the plasma dynamics itself.