Role of turbulent dissipation and thermal convection in solar wind's temperature evolution

Abstract

In this brief report, we calculate the turbulent dissipation rates in the solar wind using the Kolmogorov-like MHD turbulence phenomenology with Kolmogorov's constants calculated by Verma and Bhattacharjee [1995]. We find that the turbulent heating cannot account for the total heating of the non-Alfvénic streams in the solar wind. Solar wind observations indicate that the thermal conduction could contribute significantly to the temperature evolution of the solar wind plasma. In this paper we theoretically estimate the contribution of turbulent thermal convection to the temperature evolution; the theoretical estimates are consistent with observations.