Trace back of intermittent structures in the solar wind

NAKWACKI, M.S.; RUIZ, M.E.; NUEVO, F.A.; MANDRINI, C.H.; DASSO, S.

Tandil

Congreso; 56 Reunión Anual de la Asociación Argentina de Astronomía; 2013

AAA

The intermittent structures identified in the solar wind (SW) are a key observable to study the nature of magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) turbulence in systems with low dissipation rate, and can be characterized by computing the degree of phase correlation of the magnetic field. Such indicator is, commonly, studied near the Earth using in situ observations, while the solar wind sources remain unknown. In this work, we study in situ observations of magnetic field intensity from the Advanced Composition Explorer (ACE) spacecraft, located near 1 AU from the Sun, and synoptic charts from the Wilcox Obsevatory, together with Potential Field Source Surface (PFSS) models both from Wilcox and the Michelson Doppler Imager (MDI) onboard the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO). We identify one intermittent period by computing the phase coherence index. For these SW observations, we attempt to find the corresponding solar source identifying a particular pattern of the coronal magnetic field at the source surface, located at 2.5 R at the time the SW would have left the Sun considering its speed at 1 AU to be constant. To ascertain that this magnetic pattern plays a significant role as source of SW intermittence, more examples should be analyzed.