Complexity induced plasma turbulence in coronal holes and the solar wind

Global kinetic wave-particle interaction theories [1-4] have demonstrated that plasma turbulence emanating from coronal holes may efficiently accelerate the solar wind to observed characteristics and speeds [5,6]. The origin of such turbulence is not known although it is sometimes attributed to the small-scale reconnection processes. We demonstrate that sporadic, localized creation of magnetic coherent structures that arose from Alfvenic resonances can produce the type of turbulence as generally expected. When conditions are favorable, the coherent structures can merge, inter-act, bifurcate, convect and evolve into a "complex" state of forced and/or self-organized criticality (FSOC) leading to a broad-band power-law spectrum of plasma fluctuations of all scales [7,8]. Phenomenological models are constructed to represent the dynamic fluctuations near the coronal hole base. Dynamic renormalization-group calculations yield values of the scaling exponents that seem to agree with previously conjectured estimates [9]. This result is equally relevant to the basic understanding of the fraction of the non-propagating pseudo-2D plasma fluctuations that are prevalent in the solar wind [10]. A brief discussion on resonant heating of solar wind ions by non-propagating turbulent fluctuations that do not satisfy wave dispersion relations is also included [11, 12].