Estimating the Polytropic Indices of Plasmas with Partial Temperature Tensor Measurements: Application to Solar Wind Protons at ~1 au

Abstract

We examine the relationships between temperature tensor elements and their connection to the polytropic equation, which describes the relationship between the plasma scalar temperature and density. We investigate the possibility to determine the plasma polytropic index by fitting the fluctuations of temperature either perpendicular or parallel to the magnetic field. Such an application is particularly useful when the full temperature tensor is not available from the observations. We use solar wind proton observations at ~1 au to calculate the correlations between the temperature tensor elements and the scalar temperature. Our analysis also derives the polytropic equation in selected streamlines of solar wind plasma proton observations that exhibit temperature anisotropies related to stream-interaction regions. We compare the polytropic indices derived by fitting fluctuations of the scalar, perpendicular, and parallel temperatures, respectively. We show that the use of the parallel or perpendicular temperature, instead of the scalar temperature, still accurately derives the true, average polytropic index value, but only for a certain level of temperature anisotropy variability within the analyzed streamlines. The use of the perpendicular temperature leads to more accurate calculations, because its correlation with the scalar temperature is less affected by the anisotropy fluctuations.