Temperature anisotropy instabilities driven by intermittent velocity shears in the solar wind

Fuente: arXiv
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Autori principali: Opie, Simon, Verscharen, Daniel, Chen, Christopher H. K., Owen, Christopher J., Isenberg, Philip A., Sorriso-Valvo, Luca, Franci, Luca, Matteini, Lorenzo
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2024
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author Opie, Simon
Verscharen, Daniel
Chen, Christopher H. K.
Owen, Christopher J.
Isenberg, Philip A.
Sorriso-Valvo, Luca
Franci, Luca
Matteini, Lorenzo
author_facet Opie, Simon
Verscharen, Daniel
Chen, Christopher H. K.
Owen, Christopher J.
Isenberg, Philip A.
Sorriso-Valvo, Luca
Franci, Luca
Matteini, Lorenzo
contents Where and under what conditions the transfer of energy between electromagnetic fields and particles takes place in the solar wind remains an open question. We investigate the conditions that promote the growth of kinetic instabilities predicted by linear theory, to infer how turbulence and temperature-anisotropy-driven instabilities are interrelated. Using a large dataset from Solar Orbiter, we introduce the radial rate of strain, a novel measure computed from single-spacecraft data, that we interpret as a proxy for the double-adiabatic strain rate. The solar wind exhibits high absolute values of the radial rate of strain at locations with large temperature anisotropy. We measure the kurtosis and skewness of the radial rate of strain from the statistical moments to show that it is non-Gaussian for unstable intervals and increasingly intermittent at smaller scales with a power-law scaling. We conclude that the velocity field fluctuations in the solar wind contribute to the presence of temperature anisotropy sufficient to create potentially unstable conditions.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2409_18849
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Temperature anisotropy instabilities driven by intermittent velocity shears in the solar wind
Opie, Simon
Verscharen, Daniel
Chen, Christopher H. K.
Owen, Christopher J.
Isenberg, Philip A.
Sorriso-Valvo, Luca
Franci, Luca
Matteini, Lorenzo
Space Physics
Where and under what conditions the transfer of energy between electromagnetic fields and particles takes place in the solar wind remains an open question. We investigate the conditions that promote the growth of kinetic instabilities predicted by linear theory, to infer how turbulence and temperature-anisotropy-driven instabilities are interrelated. Using a large dataset from Solar Orbiter, we introduce the radial rate of strain, a novel measure computed from single-spacecraft data, that we interpret as a proxy for the double-adiabatic strain rate. The solar wind exhibits high absolute values of the radial rate of strain at locations with large temperature anisotropy. We measure the kurtosis and skewness of the radial rate of strain from the statistical moments to show that it is non-Gaussian for unstable intervals and increasingly intermittent at smaller scales with a power-law scaling. We conclude that the velocity field fluctuations in the solar wind contribute to the presence of temperature anisotropy sufficient to create potentially unstable conditions.
title Temperature anisotropy instabilities driven by intermittent velocity shears in the solar wind
topic Space Physics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2409.18849