Observation and Modeling of the Solar Wind Turbulence Evolution in the Sub-Mercury Inner Heliosphere
This letter exploits the radial alignment between the Parker Solar Probe and BepiColombo in late 2022 February, when both spacecraft were within Mercury’s orbit. This allows the study of the turbulent evolution, namely, the change in spectral and intermittency properties, of the same plasma parcel during its expansion from 0.11 to 0.33 au, a still unexplored region. The observational analysis of the solar wind turbulent features at the two different evolution stages is complemented by a theoretical description based on the turbulence transport model equations for nearly incompressible magnetohydrodynamics. The results provide strong evidence that the solar wind turbulence already undergoes significant evolution at distances less than 0.3 au from the Sun, which can be satisfactorily explained as due to evolving slab fluctuations. This work represents a step forward in understanding the processes that control the transition from weak to strong turbulence in the solar wind and in properly modeling the heliosphere.
Funding
D.T. was partially supported by the Italian Space Agency (ASI) under contract 2018-30-HH.0. B.S.-C. acknowledges support through STFC Ernest Rutherford Fellowship ST/V004115/1 and STFC grants ST/V000209/1 and ST/W00089X/1. L.S.-V. was funded by SNSA grants 86/20 and 145/18. L.A., L.-L.Z., and G.P.Z. acknowledge the partial support of NASA Parker Solar Probe contract SV4-84017, NSF EPSCoR RII-Track-1 cooperative agreement OIA-1655280, and a NASA IMAP grant through SUB000313/80GSFC19C0027. D.V. is supported by STFC Ernest Rutherford Fellowship ST/P003826/1 and STFC consolidated grants ST/S000240/1 and ST/W001004/1. A.M. and T.A. acknowledge the support from ASI-SERENA contract 2018- 8-HH.O and ESA contract RFP/NC/IPL-PSS/JD/258.2016. Y.N. is supported by the Austrian Research Promotion Agency (FFG) under contract 865967. D.H. is supported by the German Ministerium für Wirtschaft und Energie and the German Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt under contract 50QW1501. H.-U.A. is supported by the German Ministerium für Wirtschaft und Energie and the German Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt under contracts 50OW2101 and 50QJ1501. The FIELDS and SWEAP teams acknowledge support from NASA contract NNN06AA01C.
History
Citation
Daniele Telloni et al 2022 ApJL 938 L8Author affiliation
School of Physics and AstronomyVersion
- VoR (Version of Record)
Published in
ASTROPHYSICAL JOURNAL LETTERSVolume
938Issue
2Pagination
(8)Publisher
IOP Publishing Ltdissn
2041-8205eissn
2041-8213Acceptance date
2022-09-26Copyright date
2022Available date
2023-01-06Publisher DOI
Language
EnglishPublisher version
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