Abstract
Interplanetary medium is slightly compressive, magnetic field intensity and proton number density experience fluctuations over all scales and the compression depends on both the scale and the nature of the wind. As a matter of fact, slow wind is generally more compressive than fast wind, as shown in Fig. 5.1 where, following Bavassano et al. (1982b) and Bruno and Bavassano (1991), we report the ratio between the power density associated with magnetic field intensity fluctuations and that associated with the fluctuations of the three components. In addition, as already shown by Bavassano et al. (1982b), this parameter increases with heliocentric distance for both fast and slow wind as shown in the bottom panel, where the ratio between the compression at 0.9 AU and that at 0.3 AU is generally greater than 1. It is also interesting to notice that within the Alfvénic fast wind, the lowest compression is observed in the middle frequency range, roughly between 10−4 and 10−3 Hz. On the other hand, this frequency range has already been recognized as the most Alfvénic one, within the inner heliosphere (Bruno et al. 1996).
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Bruno, R., Carbone, V. (2016). Compressive Turbulence. In: Turbulence in the Solar Wind. Lecture Notes in Physics, vol 928. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-43440-7_5
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