Authors: Michael Terres (The University of Alabama in Huntsville), Gang Li (The University of Alabama in Huntsville)

The dynamics of the solar wind are thought to be governed by counter-propagating Alfven waves. These waves generate a turbulent cascade through nonlinear couplings between shearing wave packets. However, factors such as imbalances, intermittency, and compressive fluctuations make it difficult to fully understand MHD turbulence in the solar wind. To investigate the nature of dynamically aligning Elsasser fields in the solar wind, we used slow wind intervals from the Helios 2 spacecraft and developed a two-component model of Alfvenic and non-Alfvenic contributions. We assume that only counter-propagating Alfven wavepackets experience dynamic alignment. Our model constrains the relative amount of inward Alfven waves and structures in the slow solar wind. We find that observations of dynamic alignment scaling are hindered by the emergence non-Alfvenic fluctuations that are either generated dynamically or advected in the solar wind flow. Our study implies the need for new theoretical models to fully account for the compressibility, intermittency, and imbalanced nature of the solar wind.