Direct Measurement of the Solar-Wind Taylor Microscale using MMS Turbulence Campaign Data

TL;DR

This study uses MMS spacecraft data to directly measure the solar wind's Taylor microscale, providing a more accurate estimate that is significantly larger than previous measurements, advancing understanding of turbulence dissipation.

Contribution

The paper introduces a novel method to directly measure the Taylor microscale in solar wind turbulence using MMS data, avoiding common approximations and sample variations.

Findings

Taylor microscale estimated at ~7000 km

Result is about three times larger than previous estimates

Method enables direct measurement from a single dataset

Abstract

Using the novel Magnetospheric Multiscale (MMS) mission data accumulated during the 2019 MMS Solar Wind Turbulence Campaign, we calculate the Taylor microscale $(\lambda_{\mathrm{T}})$ of the turbulent magnetic field in the solar wind. The Taylor microscale represents the onset of dissipative processes in classical turbulence theory. An accurate estimation of Taylor scale from spacecraft data is, however, usually difficult due to low time cadence, the effect of time decorrelation, and other factors. Previous reports were based either entirely on the Taylor frozen-in approximation, which conflates time dependence, or that were obtained using multiple datasets, which introduces sample-to-sample variation of plasma parameters, or where inter-spacecraft distance were larger than the present study. The unique configuration of linear formation with logarithmic spacing of the 4 MMS spacecraft, during the campaign, enables a direct evaluation of the $\lambda_{\mathrm{T}}$ from a single dataset, independent of the Taylor frozen-in approximation. A value of $\lambda_{\mathrm{T}} \approx 7000 \, \mathrm{km}$ is obtained, which is about 3 times larger than the previous estimates.