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Magnetic reconnection and intermittent turbulence in the solar wind
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Osman, K. T., Matthaeus, W. H., Gosling, J. T., Greco, A., Servidio, S., Hnat, Bogdan, Chapman, Sandra C. and Phan, T. D. (2014) Magnetic reconnection and intermittent turbulence in the solar wind. Physical Review Letters, Volume 112 . Article number 215002. doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.112.215002 ISSN 0031-9007.
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Official URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.112.215002
Abstract
A statistical relationship between magnetic reconnection, current sheets, and intermittent turbulence in the solar wind is reported for the first time using in situ measurements from the Wind spacecraft at 1 AU. We identify intermittency as non-Gaussian fluctuations in increments of the magnetic field vector B that are spatially and temporally nonuniform. The reconnection events and current sheets are found to be concentrated in intervals of intermittent turbulence, identified using the partial variance of increments method: within the most non-Gaussian 1% of fluctuations in B, we find 87%–92% of reconnection exhausts and ∼9% of current sheets. Also, the likelihood that an identified current sheet will also correspond to a reconnection exhaust increases dramatically as the least intermittent fluctuations are removed from the data set. Hence, the turbulent solar wind contains a hierarchy of intermittent magnetic field structures that are increasingly linked to current sheets, which in turn are progressively more likely to correspond to sites of magnetic reconnection. These results could have far reaching implications for laboratory and astrophysical plasmas where turbulence and magnetic reconnection are ubiquitous.
| Item Type: | Journal Article | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Subjects: | Q Science > QB Astronomy | ||||||
| Divisions: | Faculty of Science, Engineering and Medicine > Science > Physics | ||||||
| Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH): | Magnetic reconnection, Solar wind, Turbulence | ||||||
| Journal or Publication Title: | Physical Review Letters | ||||||
| Publisher: | American Physical Society | ||||||
| ISSN: | 0031-9007 | ||||||
| Official Date: | 29 May 2014 | ||||||
| Dates: |
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| Volume: | Volume 112 | ||||||
| Number of Pages: | 5 | ||||||
| Article Number: | Article number 215002 | ||||||
| DOI: | 10.1103/PhysRevLett.112.215002 | ||||||
| Status: | Peer Reviewed | ||||||
| Publication Status: | Published | ||||||
| Access rights to Published version: | Restricted or Subscription Access | ||||||
| Date of first compliant deposit: | 27 December 2015 | ||||||
| Date of first compliant Open Access: | 27 December 2015 | ||||||
| Funder: | Science and Technology Facilities Council (Great Britain) (STFC), Seventh Framework Programme (European Commission) (FP7), United States. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), National Science Foundation (U.S.) (NSF), European Science Foundation (ESF), International Space Science Institute (ISSI) | ||||||
| Grant number: | PIRSES-2010-269297 (FP7), NNX08AT76G (NASA), NNX08AO84G (NASA), NNX10AF26G (NASA), NNX08AO83G (NASA), AGS-1156094 (NSF), AGS-1063439 (NSF) |
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