125 research outputs found
Super-diffusion versus competitive advection: a simulation
Magnetic element tracking is often used to study the transport and diffusion
of the magnetic field on the solar photosphere. From the analysis of the
displacement spectrum of these tracers, it has been recently agreed that a
regime of super-diffusivity dominates the solar surface. Quite habitually this
result is discussed in the framework of fully developed turbulence. But the
debate whether the super-diffusivity is generated by a turbulent dispersion
process, by the advection due to the convective pattern, or by even another
process, is still open, as is the question about the amount of diffusivity at
the scales relevant to the local dynamo process. To understand how such
peculiar diffusion in the solar atmosphere takes places, we compared the
results from two different data-sets (ground-based and space-borne) and
developed a simulation of passive tracers advection by the deformation of a
Voronoi network. The displacement spectra of the magnetic elements obtained by
the data-sets are consistent in retrieving a super-diffusive regime for the
solar photosphere, but the simulation also shows a super-diffusive displacement
spectrum: its competitive advection process can reproduce the signature of
super-diffusion. Therefore, it is not necessary to hypothesize a totally
developed turbulence regime to explain the motion of the magnetic elements on
the solar surface
Position and velocity space diffusion of test particles in stochastic electromagnetic fields
The two--dimensional diffusive dynamics of test particles in a random
electromagnetic field is studied. The synthetic electromagnetic fluctuations
are generated through randomly placed magnetised ``clouds'' oscillating with a
frequency . We investigate the mean square displacements of particles
in both position and velocity spaces. As increases the particles
undergo standard (Brownian--like) motion, anomalous diffusion and ballistic
motion in position space. Although in general the diffusion properties in
velocity space are not trivially related to those in position space, we find
that energization is present only when particles display anomalous diffusion in
position space. The anomalous character of the diffusion is only in the
non--standard values of the scaling exponents while the process is Gaussian.Comment: 10 pages, 4 figure
Arbitrary-order Hilbert spectral analysis and intermittency in solar wind density fluctuations
The properties of inertial and kinetic range solar wind turbulence have been
investigated with the arbitrary-order Hilbert spectral analysis method, applied
to high-resolution density measurements. Due to the small sample size, and to
the presence of strong non-stationary behavior and large-scale structures, the
classical structure function analysis fails to detect power law behavior in the
inertial range, and may underestimate the scaling exponents. However, the
Hilbert spectral method provides an optimal estimation of the scaling
exponents, which have been found to be close to those for velocity fluctuations
in fully developed hydrodynamic turbulence. At smaller scales, below the proton
gyroscale, the system loses its intermittent multiscaling properties, and
converges to a monofractal process. The resulting scaling exponents, obtained
at small scales, are in good agreement with those of classical fractional
Brownian motion, indicating a long-term memory in the process, and the absence
of correlations around the spectral break scale. These results provide
important constraints on models of kinetic range turbulence in the solar wind
Reconciliation of Waiting Time Statistics of Solar Flares Observed in Hard X-Rays
We study the waiting time distributions of solar flares observed in hard
X-rays with ISEE-3/ICE, HXRBS/SMM, WATCH/GRANAT, BATSE/CGRO, and RHESSI.
Although discordant results and interpretations have been published earlier,
based on relatively small ranges ( decades) of waiting times, we find that
all observed distributions, spanning over 6 decades of waiting times ( hrs), can be reconciled with a single distribution
function, , which
has a powerlaw slope of at large waiting times ( hrs) and flattens out at short waiting times \Delta t \lapprox
\Delta t_0 = 1/\lambda_0. We find a consistent breakpoint at hours from the WATCH, HXRBS, BATSE, and RHESSI data.
The distribution of waiting times is invariant for sampling with different flux
thresholds, while the mean waiting time scales reciprocically with the number
of detected events, . This waiting time
distribution can be modeled with a nonstationary Poisson process with a flare
rate that varies as . This flare rate distribution represents a highly
intermittent flaring productivity in short clusters with high flare rates,
separated by quiescent intervals with very low flare rates.Comment: Preprint also available at
http://www.lmsal.com/~aschwand/eprints/2010_wait.pd
Influence of the definition of dissipative events on their statistics
A convenient and widely used way to study the turbulent plasma in the solar
corona is to do statistics of properties of events (or structures), associated
with flares, that can be found in observations or in numerical simulations.
Numerous papers have followed such a methodology, using different definitions
of an event, but the reasons behind the choice of a particular definition (and
not another one) is very rarely discussed. We give here a comprehensive set of
possible event definitions starting from a one-dimensional data set such as a
time-series of energy dissipation. Each definition is then applied to a
time-series of energy dissipation issued from simulations of a shell-model of
magnetohydrodynamic turbulence as defined in Giuliani and Carbone (1998), or
from a new model of coupled shell-models designed to represent a magnetic loop
in the solar corona. We obtain distributions of the peak dissipation power,
total energy, duration and waiting-time associated to each definition. These
distributions are then investigated and compared, and the influence of the
definition of an event on statistics is discussed. In particular, power-law
distributions are more likely to appear when using a threshold. The sensitivity
of the distributions to the definition of an event seems also to be weaker for
events found in a highly intermittent time series. Some implications on
statistical results obtained from observations are discussed.Comment: 8 pages, 13 figures. Submitted to Astronomy&Astrophysic
Identification of the different magnetic field contributions during a geomagnetic storm in magnetospheric and ground observations
Abstract. We used the empirical mode decomposition (EMD) to investigate the time variation of the magnetospheric and ground-based observations of the Earth's magnetic field during both quiet and disturbed periods. We found two timescale variations in magnetospheric data which are associated with different magnetospheric current systems and the characteristic diurnal orbital variation, respectively. On the ground we identified three timescale variations related to the solar-wind–magnetosphere high-frequency interactions, the ionospheric processes, and the internal dynamics of the magnetosphere. This approach is able to identify the different physical processes involved in solar-wind–magnetosphere–ionosphere coupling. In addition, the large-timescale contribution can be used as a local index for the identification of the intensity of a geomagnetic storm on the ground
Observation of inertial energy cascade in interplanetary space plasma
We show in this article direct evidence for the presence of an inertial
energy cascade, the most characteristic signature of hydromagnetic turbulence
(MHD), in the solar wind as observed by the Ulysses spacecraft. After a brief
rederivation of the equivalent of Yaglom's law for MHD turbulence, we show that
a linear relation is indeed observed for the scaling of mixed third order
structure functions involving Els\"asser variables. This experimental result,
confirming the prescription stemming from a theorem for MHD turbulence, firmly
establishes the turbulent character of low-frequency velocity and magnetic
field fluctuations in the solar wind plasma
Model for the spatio-temporal intermittency of the energy dissipation in turbulent flows
Modeling the intermittent behavior of turbulent energy dissipation processes
both in space and time is often a relevant problem when dealing with phenomena
occurring in high Reynolds number flows, especially in astrophysical and space
fluids. In this paper, a dynamical model is proposed to describe the
spatio-temporal intermittency of energy dissipation rate in a turbulent system.
This is done by using a shell model to simulate the turbulent cascade and
introducing some heuristic rules, partly inspired by the well known -model,
to construct a spatial structure of the energy dissipation rate. In order to
validate the model and to study its spatially intermittency properties, a
series of numerical simulations have been performed. These show that the level
of spatial intermittency of the system can be simply tuned by varying a single
parameter of the model and that scaling laws in agreement with those obtained
from experiments on fully turbulent hydrodynamic flows can be recovered. It is
finally suggested that the model could represent a useful tool to simulate the
spatio-temporal intermittency of turbulent energy dissipation in those high
Reynolds number astrophysical fluids where impulsive energy release processes
can be associated to the dynamics of the turbulent cascade.Comment: 22 pages, 9 figure
Characterising anomalous transport in accretion disks from X-ray observations
Whilst direct observations of internal transport in accretion disks are not yet possible, measurement of the energy emitted from accreting astrophysical systems can provide useful information on the physical mechanisms at work. Here we examine the unbroken multi-year time variation of the total X-ray flux from three sources: Cygnus X-1 , the microquasar GRS 1915+105 , and for comparison the nonaccreting Crab nebula. To complement previous analyses, we demonstrate that the application of advanced statistical methods to these observational time-series reveals important contrasts in the nature and scaling properties of the transport processes operating within these sources. We find the Crab signal resembles Gaussian noise; the Cygnus X-1 signal is a leptokurtic random walk whose self-similar properties persist on timescales up to three years; and the GRS 1915+105 signal is similar to that from Cygnus X-1, but with self-similarity extending possibly to only a few days. This evidence of self-similarity provides a robust quantitative characterisation of anomalous transport occuring within the systems
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