Intermittent, Reflection-Driven, Strong Imbalanced MHD Turbulence

TL;DR

This paper presents a new phenomenological model of strong imbalanced MHD turbulence that incorporates intermittency and wave reflection, aligning well with solar wind observations and suggesting increased ion heating.

Contribution

It introduces a novel model for reflection-driven imbalanced MHD turbulence that accounts for intermittency and matches observational data from the Parker Solar Probe.

Findings

Model predicts inertial-range Elsasser spectra slopes

Intermittency increases parallel wave numbers at small scales

Results imply enhanced ion cyclotron heating in solar wind

Abstract

We develop a phenomenological model of strong imbalanced magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) turbulence that accounts for intermittency and the reflection of Alfven waves by spatial variations in the Alfven speed. Our model predicts the slopes of the inertial-range Elsasser power spectra, the scaling exponents of the higher-order Elsasser structure functions, and the way in which the parallel (to the magnetic field) length scale of the fluctuations varies with the perpendicular length scale. These predictions agree reasonably well with measurements of solar-wind turbulence from the Parker Solar Probe (PSP). In contrast to previous models of intermittency in balanced MHD turbulence, we find that intermittency in reflection-driven MHD turbulence increases the parallel wave numbers of the energetically dominant fluctuations at small perpendicular length scales. This, like the PSP measurements with which our model agrees, suggests that turbulence in the solar wind and solar corona may lead to more ion cyclotron heating than previously realized.