Chaos and turbulence in solar wind

Abstract

Large amplitude waves as well as turbulence has been observed in the interplanetary medium. This turbulence is not understood to the extent that one would like to. By means of techniques of nonlinear dynamical systems, attempts are being made to properly understand the turbulence in the solar wind, which is essentially a nonuniform streaming plasma consisting of hydrogen and a fraction of helium. We demonstrate that the observed large amplitude waves can generate solitary waves, which in turn, because of some propagating solar distubance, can produce chaos in the medium. The chaotic fields thus generated can lead to anomalously large plasma heating and acceleration.

Unlike the solitary waves in uniform plasmas, in nonuniform plasmas we get accelerated solitary waves, which lead to electromagnetic as well as electrostatic (e.g. ion acoustic) radiations. The latter can be a very efficient source of plasma heating.