Magnetic Reconnection and Intermittent Turbulence in the Solar Wind

Abstract

A statistical relationship between magnetic reconnection, current sheets, and intermittent turbulence in the solar wind is reported for the first time using in situ measurements from the Wind spacecraft at 1 AU. We identify intermittency as non-Gaussian fluctuations in increments of the magnetic field vector $\mathbf{B}$ that are spatially and temporally nonuniform. The reconnection events and current sheets are found to be concentrated in intervals of intermittent turbulence, identified using the partial variance of increments method: within the most non-Gaussian 1% of fluctuations in $\mathbf{B}$, we find 87%--92% of reconnection exhausts and $\ensuremath{\sim}9%$ of current sheets. Also, the likelihood that an identified current sheet will also correspond to a reconnection exhaust increases dramatically as the least intermittent fluctuations are removed from the data set. Hence, the turbulent solar wind contains a hierarchy of intermittent magnetic field structures that are increasingly linked to current sheets, which in turn are progressively more likely to correspond to sites of magnetic reconnection. These results could have far reaching implications for laboratory and astrophysical plasmas where turbulence and magnetic reconnection are ubiquitous.