Turbulent processes in the Earth's magnetotail: spectral and statistical research

Abstract

Abstract. We use the magnetic field measurements from four spacecraft of the Cluster-II mission (three events from 2005 to 2015) for the analysis of turbulent processes in the Earth's magnetotail. For this study we conduct the spectral, wavelet and statistical analysis. In the framework of statistical examination, we determine the kurtosis for selected events and conduct extended self-similarity evaluation (analysis of distribution function moments of magnetic field fluctuations on different scales). We compare the high-order structure function of magnetic fluctuations during dipolarization with the isotropic Kolmogorov model and three-dimensional log-Poisson model with She–Leveque parameters. We obtain power-law scaling of the generalized diffusion coefficient (the power index that varies within the range of 0.2–0.7). The obtained results show the presence of super-diffusion processes. We find the significant difference of the spectral indices for the intervals before and during the dipolarization. Before dipolarization the spectral index lies in the range from -1.68±0.05 to -2.08±0.05 (∼5/3 according to the Kolmogorov model). During dipolarization the type of turbulent motion changes: on large timescales the turbulent flow is close to the homogeneous models of Kolmogorov and Iroshnikov–Kraichnan (the spectral index lies in the range from −2.20 to −1.53), and at smaller timescales the spectral index is in the range from −2.89 to −2.35 (the Hall–MHD model). The kink frequency is less than or close to the average value of the proton gyrofrequency. The wavelet analysis shows the presence of both direct and inverse cascade processes, which indicates the possibility of self-organization processes, as well as the presence of Pc pulsations.