SCALING OF COMPRESSIBLE MAGNETOHYDRODYNAMIC TURBULENCE IN THE FAST SOLAR WIND

The role of compressible fluctuations in the energy cascade of fast solar wind turbulence is studied using a reduced form of an exact law derived recently for compressible isothermal magnetohydrodynamics and in situ observations from the THEMIS B/ARTEMIS P1 spacecraft. A statistical survey of the data revealed a turbulent energy cascade over a range of two decades of scales that is broader than the previous estimates made from an exact incompressible law. A term-by-term analysis of the compressible model reveals new insight into the role played by the compressible fluctuations in the energy cascade. The compressible fluctuations are shown to amplify by two to four times the turbulent cascade rate with respect to the incompressible model in similar to 10% of the analyzed samples. This new estimated cascade rate is shown to provide the adequate energy dissipation required to account for the local heating of the non-adiabatic solar wind.