Investigating Alfvenic Turbulence in Fast and Slow Solar Wind Streams

Solar wind turbulence dominated by large-amplitude Alfvenic fluctuations, mainly propagating away from the Sun, is ubiquitous in high-speed solar wind streams. Recent observations performed in the inner heliosphere (from 1 AU down to tens of solar radii) have proved that also slow wind streams show sometimes strong Alfvenic signatures. Within this context, the present paper focuses on a comparative study on the characterization of Alfvenic turbulence in fast and slow solar wind intervals observed at 1 AU where degradation of Alfvenic correlations is expected. In particular, we compared the behavior of different parameters to characterize the Alfvenic content of the fluctuations, using also the Elsasser variables to derive the spectral behavior of the normalized cross-helicity and residual energy. This study confirms that the Alfvenic slow wind stream resembles, in many respects, a fast wind stream. The velocity-magnetic field (v-b) correlation coefficient is similar in the two cases as well as the amplitude of the fluctuations although it is not clear to what extent the condition of incompressibility holds. Moreover, the spectral analysis shows that fast wind and Alfvenic slow wind have similar normalized cross-helicity values but in general the fast wind streams are closer to energy equipartition. Despite the overall similarities between the two solar wind regimes, each stream shows also peculiar features, that could be linked to the intrinsic evolution history that each of them has experienced and that should be taken into account to investigate how and why Alfvenicity evolves in the inner heliosphere.