Coexistence of Self-Organized Criticality and Intermittent Turbulence in the Solar Corona

Abstract

An extended data set of extreme ultraviolet images of the solar corona provided by the SOHO spacecraft are analyzed using statistical methods common to studies of self-organized criticality (SOC) and intermittent turbulence (IT). The data exhibits simultaneous hallmarks of both regimes, namely power law avalanche statistics as well as multiscaling of structure functions for spatial activity. This implies that both SOC and IT may be manifestations of a single complex dynamical process entangling avalanches of magnetic energy dissipation with turbulent particle flows.