On the temporal variability of the “strahl” and its relationship with solar wind characteristics : STEREO SWEA observations

Louarn, Philippe and Dieval, Catherine and Genot, Vincent and Lavraud, Benoit and Opitz, Andrea and Fedorov, Andrei and Sauvaud, Jean Andre and Larson, D. and Galvin, A. and Acuna, M. and Luhmann, Janet (2009) On the temporal variability of the “strahl” and its relationship with solar wind characteristics : STEREO SWEA observations. Solar Physics, 259 (1). pp. 311-321. ISSN 0038-0938

Abstract

The “strahl” is a specific population of the solar wind, constituted by strongly field aligned electrons flowing away from the Sun, with energies >60 eV. Using the Solar Wind Electron Analyzer (SWEA) onboard STEREO, we investigate the short time scale fluctuations of this population. It is shown that its phase space density (PSD) at times presents fluctuations larger than 50% at scales of the order of minutes and less. The fluctuations are particularly strong for periods of a few tens of hours in high-speed streams, following the crossing of the corotating interaction region, when the strahl is also the most collimated in pitch angle. The amplitude of the fluctuations tends to decrease in conjunction with a broadening in pitch angle. Generally, the strongly fluctuating strahl is observed when the magnetic field is also highly perturbed. That SWEA is able to perform a very rapid 3D analysis at a given energy is essential since it can be demonstrated that the observed magnetic turbulence can only marginally perturb the PSD measurements.