Imperial College London

ProfessorTimothyHorbury

Faculty of Natural SciencesDepartment of Physics

Professor of Physics
 
 
 
//

Contact

 

+44 (0)20 7594 7676t.horbury Website

 
 
//

Location

 

6M65Huxley BuildingSouth Kensington Campus

//

Summary

 

Publications

Citation

BibTex format

@article{Wicks:2013:2/177,
author = {Wicks, RT and Roberts, DA and Mallet, A and Schekochihin, AA and Horbury, TS and Chen, CHK},
doi = {2/177},
journal = {The Astrophysical Journal},
pages = {177--177},
title = {Correlations at Large Scales and the Onset of Turbulence in the Fast Solar Wind},
url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1088/0004-637X/778/2/177},
volume = {778},
year = {2013}
}

RIS format (EndNote, RefMan)

TY  - JOUR
AB - We show that the scaling of structure functions of magnetic and velocity fields in a mostly highly Alfvénic fast solar wind stream depends strongly on the joint distribution of the dimensionless measures of cross helicity and residual energy. Already at very low frequencies, fluctuations that are both more balanced (cross helicity ~0) and equipartitioned (residual energy ~0) have steep structure functions reminiscent of "turbulent" scalings usually associated with the inertial range. Fluctuations that are magnetically dominated (residual energy ~−1), and so have closely anti-aligned Elsasser-field vectors, or are imbalanced (cross helicity ~1), and so have closely aligned magnetic and velocity vectors, have wide "1/f" ranges typical of fast solar wind. We conclude that the strength of nonlinear interactions of individual fluctuations within a stream, diagnosed by the degree of correlation in direction and magnitude of magnetic and velocity fluctuations, determines the extent of the 1/f region observed, and thus the onset scale for the turbulent cascade.
AU - Wicks,RT
AU - Roberts,DA
AU - Mallet,A
AU - Schekochihin,AA
AU - Horbury,TS
AU - Chen,CHK
DO - 2/177
EP - 177
PY - 2013///
SN - 0004-637X
SP - 177
TI - Correlations at Large Scales and the Onset of Turbulence in the Fast Solar Wind
T2 - The Astrophysical Journal
UR - http://dx.doi.org/10.1088/0004-637X/778/2/177
UR - http://hdl.handle.net/10044/1/25438
VL - 778
ER -