Intermittency, scaling and the Fokker-Planck approach to fluctuations of the solar wind bulk plasma parameters as seen by the WIND spacecraft

Abstract

The solar wind provides a natural laboratory for observations of MHD turbulence over extended temporal scales. Here, we apply a model independent method of differencing and rescaling to identify self-similarity in the Probability Density Functions (PDF) of fluctuations in solar wind bulk plasma parameters as seen by the WIND spacecraft. Whereas the fluctuations of speed v and IMF magnitude B are multi-fractal, we find that the fluctuations in the ion density rho, energy densities B^2 and rho v^2 as well as MHD-approximated Poynting flux vB^2 are mono-scaling on the timescales up to ~26 hours. The single curve, which we find to describe the fluctuations PDF of all these quantities up to this timescale, is non-Gaussian. We model this PDF with two approaches-- Fokker-Planck, for which we derive the transport coefficients and associated Langevin equation, and the Castaing distribution that arises from a model for the intermittent turbulent cascade.