Diagnosing solar wind origins using in situ measurements in the inner heliosphere
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Published version
Author(s)
Stansby, David
Horbury, Timothy
Matteini, Lorenzo
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
Robustly identifying the solar sources of individual packets of solar wind measured in interplanetary space remains an open problem. We set out to see if this problem is easier to tackle using solar wind measurements closer to the Sun than 1 au, where the mixing and dynamical interaction of different solar wind streams is reduced. Using measurements from the Helios mission, we examined how the proton core temperature anisotropy and cross-helicity varied with distance. At 0.3 au there are two clearly separated anisotropic and isotropic populations of solar wind that are not distinguishable at 1 au. The anisotropic population is always Alfvénic and spans a wide range of speeds. In contrast the isotropic population has slow speeds, and contains a mix of Alfvénic wind with constant mass fluxes and non-Alfvénic wind with large and highly varying mass fluxes. We split the in situ measurements into three categories according these observations, and suggest that these categories correspond to wind that originated in the core of coronal holes, in or near active regions or the edges of coronal holes, and as small transients form streamers or pseudo-streamers. Although our method by itself is simplistic, it provides a new tool that can be used in combination with other methods for identifying the sources of solar wind measured by Parker Solar Probe and Solar Orbiter.
Date Issued
2019-01-11
Date Acceptance
2018-10-15
Citation
Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 2019, 482 (2), pp.1706-1714
ISSN
0035-8711
Publisher
Oxford University Press (OUP)
Start Page
1706
End Page
1714
Journal / Book Title
Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Volume
482
Issue
2
Copyright Statement
© 2018 The Author(s). Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Royal Astronomical Society.
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
License URL
Sponsor
Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC)
Grant Number
ST/N000692/1
Subjects
astro-ph.SR
physics.space-ph
0201 Astronomical And Space Sciences
Astronomy & Astrophysics
Publication Status
Published
Date Publish Online
2018-10-22