Direct Measurement of the Solar-wind Taylor Microscale Using MMS Turbulence Campaign Data

Abstract

Abstract Using the novel Magnetospheric Multiscale (MMS) mission data accumulated during the 2019 MMS Solar Wind Turbulence Campaign, we calculate the Taylor microscale (λ T) of the turbulent magnetic field in the solar wind. The Taylor microscale represents the onset of dissipative processes in classical turbulence theory. However, an accurate estimation of the Taylor scale from spacecraft data is usually difficult due to low time cadence, the effect of time decorrelation, and other factors. Previous reports were based either entirely on the Taylor frozen-in approximation, which conflates time dependence, or were obtained using multiple data sets, which introduces sample-to-sample variation of plasma parameters, or had interspacecraft distances that were larger than the present study. The unique configuration of linear formation with logarithmic spacing of the four MMS spacecraft, during the campaign, enables a direct evaluation of the λ T from a single data set, independent of the Taylor frozen-in approximation. A value of λ T ≈ 7000 km is obtained, which is about three times larger than the previous estimates.