Testing for Markovian Character and Modeling of Intermittency in Solar Wind Turbulence

TL;DR

This paper analyzes solar wind turbulence using Markov process theory, demonstrating that the turbulent cascade approximately satisfies the Chapman-Kolmogorov equation and modeling magnetic field fluctuations with a Fokker-Planck equation.

Contribution

It introduces a Markov process-based approach to characterize solar wind turbulence and models the magnetic fluctuations with a Fokker-Planck equation derived from experimental data.

Findings

Chapman-Kolmogorov equation approximately satisfied

Fokker-Planck model fits experimental distributions

Evidence of local transfer mechanisms in turbulence

Abstract

We present results of statistical analysis of solar wind turbulence using an approach based on the theory of Markov processes. It is shown that the Chapman-Kolmogorov equation is approximately satisfied for the turbulent cascade. We evaluate the first two Kramers-Moyal coefficients from experimental data and show that the solution of the resulting Fokker-Planck equation agrees well with experimental probability distributions. Our results suggest the presence of a local transfer mechanism for magnetic field fluctuations in solar wind turbulence.