Observation and theoretical modeling of electron scale solar wind turbulence
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Author/Creator ORCID
Date
2011-03-16
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Citation of Original Publication
Sahraoui, Fouad, Melvyn L. Goldstein, K. Abdul-Kader, Gérard Belmont, Laurence Rezeau, Patrick Robert, and Patrick Canu. “Observation and Theoretical Modeling of Electron Scale Solar Wind Turbulence.” Comptes Rendus Physique, Propagation and plasmas: new challenges, new applications, 12, no. 2 (March 1, 2011): 132–40. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.crhy.2010.11.008.
Rights
This work was written as part of one of the author's official duties as an Employee of the United States Government and is therefore a work of the United States Government. In accordance with 17 U.S.C. 105, no copyright protection is available for such works under U.S. Law.
Public Domain Mark 1.0
Public Domain Mark 1.0
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Abstract
Turbulence at MagnetoHydroDynamics (MHD) scales in the solar wind has been studied for more than three decades, using data analysis, theoretical and numerical modeling. However, smaller scales have not been explored until very recently. Here, we review recent results on the first observation of cascade and dissipation of the solar wind turbulence at the electron scales. Thanks to the high resolution magnetic and electric field data of the Cluster spacecraft, we computed the spectra of turbulence up to ~ 100 Hz (in the spacecraft reference frame) and found evidence of energy dissipation around the Doppler-shifted electron gyroscale fₚₑ. Before its dissipation, the energy is shown to undergo two cascades: a Kolmogorov-like cascade with a scaling f-¹.⁶ above the proton gyroscale, and a new f-².³ cascade at the sub-proton and electron gyroscales. Above fₚₑ the spectrum has a steeper power law ~ f-⁴.¹ down to the noise level of the instrument. Solving numerically the linear Maxwell–Vlasov equations combined with recent theoretical predictions of the Gyro-Kinetic theory, we show that the present results are consistent with a scenario of a quasi-two-dimensional cascade into Kinetic Alfvén modes (KAW). New analyses of other data sets, where the Cluster separation (of about ~ 200 km) allowed us to explore the sub-proton scales using the k-filtering technique, and to confirm the 2D nature of the turbulence at those scales.