Premium
The structure of helical interplanetary magnetic fields
Author(s) -
Goldstein M. L.,
Roberts D. A.,
Fitch C. A.
Publication year - 1991
Publication title -
geophysical research letters
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.007
H-Index - 273
eISSN - 1944-8007
pISSN - 0094-8276
DOI - 10.1029/91gl01608
Subject(s) - physics , helicity , interplanetary magnetic field , interplanetary spaceflight , magnetic helicity , magnetic field , computational physics , astrophysics , solar wind , magnetohydrodynamics , quantum mechanics
The interplanetary magnetic field is known to be highly helical. Although the detailed spatial structure of the fields has yet to be elucidated, the helicity spectrum has been conjectured to result from a random walk in direction of a constant magnitude magnetic field vector. We demonstrate that a model using three‐dimensional fluctuations with variations in | B | gives a good fit to the helicity spectrum as well as to other properties of the interplanetary magnetic field.