Papers from SWICo members

F. Pecora, S. Servidio, A. Greco, W. H. Matthaeus

Plasma turbulence can be viewed as a magnetic landscape populated by large- and small-scale coherent structures. In this complex network, large helical magnetic tubes might be separated by small-scale magnetic reconnection events (current sheets). However, the identification of these magnetic structures in a continuous stream of data has always been a challenging task.

Here we present a method that is able to characterize both the large and small scale structures of the turbulent solar wind, based on the combined use of a filtered magnetic helicity (H_m) and the Partial Variance of Increments (PVI).
This simple, single-spacecraft technique, has been validated first via direct numerical simulations of plasma turbulence and then applied to data from the Parker Solar Probe (PSP) mission.
This novel analysis, combining H_m~PVI methods, reveals that a large number of flux tubes populate the solar wind and continuously merge in contact regions where magnetic reconnection and particle acceleration may occur.

Publication: Pecora F., Servidio S., Greco A., Matthaeus W.~H., 2021, A\&A, 650, A20. doi:10.1051/0004-6361/202039639. https://www.aanda.org/component/article?access=doi&doi=10.1051/0004-6361/202039639