Low-frequency Intermittency and Structures in the Solar Wind at 1 au
Abstract
Intermittency in the solar wind is commonly studied within the inertial and dissipative ranges, where scale-dependent magnetic field distributions become increasingly non-Gaussian toward smaller scales until dissipation becomes important. Conversely, whether Gaussianity is recovered at large scales remains unclear. To address this, we systematically examine magnetic field increment kurtosis over scales from 1 minute to 1 year using more than two decades of in situ observations from NASA's Wind and ACE spacecraft. We find that although kurtosis tends toward Gaussian value of 3 near the correlation scales, it generally remains elevated (super-Gaussian) at larger scales. Kurtosis also varies substantially over time, with pronounced super-Gaussian intervals during high solar activity phases and sporadic sub-Gaussian intervals primarily in the radial component. These results provide evidence for large-scale intermittency in the solar wind, potentially arising from mixing of different solar wind streams and nonstationary driving of solar sources.
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BibTeX
@misc{wang2026lowfrequency,
title = {{Low-frequency Intermittency and Structures in the Solar Wind at 1 au}},
author = {Jiaming Wang and Francesco Pecora and Yan Yang and William H. Matthaeus},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = sep,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2609.12275},
eprint = {2609.12275},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.12275},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Low-frequency Intermittency and Structures in the Solar Wind at 1 au
AU - Jiaming Wang
AU - Francesco Pecora
AU - Yan Yang
AU - William H. Matthaeus
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/09/10
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2609.12275
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.12275
AB - Intermittency in the solar wind is commonly studied within the inertial and dissipative ranges, where scale-dependent magnetic field distributions become increasingly non-Gaussian toward smaller scales until dissipation becomes important. Conversely, whether Gaussianity is recovered at large scales remains unclear. To address this, we systematically examine magnetic field increment kurtosis over scales from 1 minute to 1 year using more than two decades of in situ observations from NASA's Wind and ACE spacecraft. We find that although kurtosis tends toward Gaussian value of 3 near the correlation scales, it generally remains elevated (super-Gaussian) at larger scales. Kurtosis also varies substantially over time, with pronounced super-Gaussian intervals during high solar activity phases and sporadic sub-Gaussian intervals primarily in the radial component. These results provide evidence for large-scale intermittency in the solar wind, potentially arising from mixing of different solar wind streams and nonstationary driving of solar sources.
ER -