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 magnetohydrodynamic (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 interplanetary magnetic field (IMF) magnitude B are multifractal, we find that the fluctuations in the ion density rho, energy densities B2 and rhov(2) as well as MHD-approximated Poynting flux vB(2) are monoscaling on the time scales up to 26 hr. The single curve, which we find to describe the fluctuations PDF of all these quantities up to this time scale, 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.