Testing the Effects of Expansion on Solar Wind Turbulence

Abstract

We present a multi-spacecraft approach to test the predictions of recent studies on the effect of solar wind expansion on the radial spectral, variance, and local 3D anisotropies of the turbulence. We found that on small scales (5000-10,000 km) the power levels of the B-trace structure functions do not depend on the sampling direction with respect to the radial suggesting that on this scale the effect of expansion is small possibly due to fast turbulent timescales. On larger scales (110-135 R _E ), the fluctuations of the radial magnetic field component are reduced by ∼20% compared to the transverse (perpendicular to radial) ones, which could be due to expansion confining the fluctuations into the plane perpendicular to radial. For the local 3D spectral anisotropy, the B-trace structure functions showed dependence on the sampling direction with respect to radial. The anisotropy in the perpendicular plane is reduced when the increments are taken perpendicular with respect to radial, which could be an effect of expansion.