Statistical Analysis of Intermittency in the Solar Wind using Rank-Ordered Multifractal Analysis of Ulysses data

Herve Lamy1, Marius Echim1,2 and Tom Chang3, (1)Belgian Institute for Space Aeronomy, Brussels, Belgium, (2)Institute of Space Sciences, Bucharest, Romania, (3)Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research, Cambridge, MA, United States

Contact First Author: Herve Lamy; herve.lamy@aeronomie.be

Abstract ID#: 33554

 

English Abstract:
The intermittent properties of the turbulence in the solar wind are investigated using Ulysses data and the direct Rank-Ordered Multifractal Analysis (ROMA) developed by Chang & Wu (2008). Ulysses databases were carefully selected previously in the framework of the STORM project (http://www.storm-fp7.eu/) in order to use only pure slow and fast solar wind data. They correspond to 3 time periods : 1997-1998 and 2007-2008 for the solar minimum and 1999-2001 for solar maximum.

We start by illustrating the key-features of ROMA applied on Ulysses magnetic field data recorded in the fast solar wind and explain the usefulness of the method to understand plasma complexity and turbulence. Then we provide the multifractal (ROMA) spectra s(Y) obtained for different heliographic latitudes, radial distances and types of wind (fast versus slow). We discuss the statistical properties of the intermittency for each data set as resulting from ROMA analysis.

Research supported by the European Community’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) under grant agreement no 313038/STORM and the US National Science Foundation.

T. Chang and C.C. Wu, Rank-Ordered Multifractal Spectrum for Intermittent Fluctuations, Phys. Rev. E77, 045401(R), 2008

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