Electric Field Statistics in the Solar Wind

The induced electric field, a fundamental quantity in magnetohydrodynamics (MHD), having important possible implications in turbulence and in particle scattering, is examined both theoretically and observationally. Using the assumption of normally distributed velocity and magnetic field fluctuations, we find that the induced electric field component distributions are exponential or exponential-like, in accordance with the degree and type of correlations present. Observations at 1 AU using four day samples of one-hour data confirm that this distribution is a very good approximation for low frequency MHD scales.