Impact of Residual Energy on Solar Wind Turbulent Spectra

Abstract

Abstract It is widely reported that the power spectra of magnetic field and velocity fluctuations in the solar wind have power-law scalings with inertial-range spectral indices of −5/3 and −3/2, respectively. Studies of solar wind turbulence have repeatedly demonstrated the impact of discontinuities and coherent structures on the measured spectral index. Whether or not such discontinuities are self-generated by the turbulence or simply observations of advected structures from the inner heliosphere has been a matter of considerable debate. This work presents a statistical study of magnetic field and velocity spectral indices over 10 years of solar wind observations; we find that anomalously steep magnetic spectra occur in magnetically dominated intervals with negative residual energy. However, an increase in negative residual energy has no noticeable impact on the spectral index of the velocity fluctuations, suggesting that these intervals with negative residual energy correspond to intermittent magnetic structures. We show statistically that the difference between magnetic and velocity spectral indices is a monotonic function of residual energy, consistent with previous work that suggested that intermittency in fluctuations causes spectral steepening. Additionally, a statistical analysis of cross-helicity demonstrates that when the turbulence is balanced (low cross-helicity), the magnetic and velocity spectral indices are not equal, which suggests that our observations of negative residual energy and intermittent structures are related to nonlinear turbulent interactions rather than the presence of advected pre-existing flux-tube structures.