Third-moment descriptions of the interplanetary turbulent cascade, intermittency and back transfer.

We review some aspects of solar wind turbulence with an emphasis on the ability of the turbulence to account for the observed heating of the solar wind. Particular attention is paid to the use of structure functions in computing energy cascade rates and their general agreement with the measured thermal proton heating. We then examine the use of 1 h data samples that are comparable in length to the correlation length for the fluctuations to obtain insights into local inertial range dynamics and find evidence for intermittency in the computed energy cascade rates. When the magnetic energy dominates the kinetic energy, there is evidence of anti-correlation in the cascade of energy associated with the outward- and inward-propagating components that we can only partially explain.

Turbulent cascade at 1 AU in high cross-helicity flows.

Analysis of the scaling of the mixed third moments of velocity and magnetic fluctuations in the solar wind plasma, and the energy cascade rates derived from the scaling, reveal a strong dependence on the amount of cross-field correlation between the velocity and magnetic field fluctuations. When the correlation is greater than about 75%, the cascade rate of the outward-propagating (majority) component, and of the total energy and the cross-helicity are surprisingly negative. This indicates a back transfer of energy from small to large scales within the inertial range of the dominant outward-propagating component. It is clear that the transfer of energy acts to reinforce the dominance of the outward-propagating (majority) component and may explain, in part, the persistent observations of large cross-field correlations that have been a defining aspect of solar wind physics for almost 40 years.