Intermittent turbulence in the solar wind

This paper demonstrates the existence of intermittent turbulence in the solar wind at 8.5 AU. The pth-order velocity structure functions show scaling behavior in the range of periods from 0.85 hour to 13.6 hours for p ≤ 20. The exponent of the scaling law s(p) is a quadratic function of p. The observations of s(p) for compressible MHD turbulence on a scale of the order of ∼1 AU = 1.5 x 108 km are consistent with laboratory measurements of s(p) for gasdynamic turbulence on a scale of the order of 1 m, indicating the universal character of intermittent turbulence. The observations are not described by the constant β model of intermittent turbulence. They are marginally consistent with the lognormal model. The observations are consistent with a random β model prediction which assumes that the turbulence is a mixture of sheets and space-filling eddies