Authors: Nickolas Giardetti (Florida Institute of Technology), Sofiane Bourouaine (Florida Institute of Technology)
Of the ever-increasing amount of missions to study the Sun, few have polar orbits. The Ulysses
mission is one such probe, reaching a maximum heliographic latitude of 80◦ from the ecliptic plane.
Such a trajectory provides opportunities to study solar wind dynamics at higher latitudes than
typically available. The purpose of our work is to investigate the properties of the slow wind
with respect to heliographic latitude to further understand its origin and the characteristics of
its turbulence. A comparative study is conducted investigating the turbulent parameters such as
magnetic compressibility, plasma compressibility and normalized cross-helicity in the slow wind at
lower and higher latitudes using Ulysses and WIND data. Additionally, a statistical test is performed
to determine whether a statistically significant difference between the high and low populations is
present. The results of the analysis suggest heliographic latitude does not play a significant role in
the distributions of the turbulent characteristics. This further suggests that the physical origins of
slow solar wind exhibiting balanced and imbalanced Alfvénic turbulence remain consistent across
regions of high and low latitude.
mission is one such probe, reaching a maximum heliographic latitude of 80◦ from the ecliptic plane.
Such a trajectory provides opportunities to study solar wind dynamics at higher latitudes than
typically available. The purpose of our work is to investigate the properties of the slow wind
with respect to heliographic latitude to further understand its origin and the characteristics of
its turbulence. A comparative study is conducted investigating the turbulent parameters such as
magnetic compressibility, plasma compressibility and normalized cross-helicity in the slow wind at
lower and higher latitudes using Ulysses and WIND data. Additionally, a statistical test is performed
to determine whether a statistically significant difference between the high and low populations is
present. The results of the analysis suggest heliographic latitude does not play a significant role in
the distributions of the turbulent characteristics. This further suggests that the physical origins of
slow solar wind exhibiting balanced and imbalanced Alfvénic turbulence remain consistent across
regions of high and low latitude.