Scale-invariance and Anisotropy of small-scale magnetic fluctuations in solar wind turbulence as seen by CLUSTER

In-situ observations of fluctuations in the solar wind typically show an ‘inertial range’ of MHD turbulence, and at higher frequencies, a cross-over to spatial temporal scales where kinetic effects become important. In-situ monitors such as WIND and ACE have provided observations over a decade of this dissipation/dispersion range that have motivated theoretical studies that in turn predict the nature of the scaling in this region. We will present some results from very high-frequency magnetic field data from the four Cluster II spacecraft in intervals where the spacecraft were in quasi-stationary ambient solar wind and where the instruments were operating in burst mode. The magnetic field data are from the fluxgate and search-coil magnetometers from the Cluster FGM experiment (~67Hz), and the STAFF experiment (~450 Hz). These data sets provide observations of this dissipation/dispersion range over approximately two decades in frequency. This high cadence allows a more precise determination of the statistics at these small scales; especially the estimation of scaling exponents. Theories centred around the dispersion of MHD waves and their associated damping and particle heating have been proposed to account for this scaling range. Since the spacecraft data shows a clean break from the scaling in the inertial range, followed by a different power-law spanning over approximately two decades, these theories centre around predictions of the spectral slope and the associated scaling exponents. Motivated by the need to distinguish these theoretical predictions, we perform a robust multiscale statistical analysis focusing on power spectra, PDFs of field fluctuations, higher-order statistics to quantify the scaling of fluctuations; as well as describing the degree of anisotropy in the fluctuations parallel and perpendicular to the average magnetic field. We use these results to infer the nature of the physical processes as we pass through the crossover from inertial range to near-dissipation range phenomenology; with special attention being made on quantification of sources of error from both instrument noise and finite sample sizes. Reference article: K. H. Kiyani, S. C. Chapman, Yu. V. Khotyaintsev, M. W. Dunlop, and F. Sahraoui, Phys. Rev. Lett. 103, 075006 (2009).