Magnetic turbulence in the plasma sheet

Small‐scale magnetic turbulence observed by the Cluster spacecraft in the plasma sheet is investigated by means of a wavelet estimator suitable for detecting distinct scaling characteristics even in noisy measurements. The spectral estimators used for this purpose are affected by a frequency‐dependent bias. The variances of the wavelet coefficients, however, match the power‐law shaped spectra, which makes the wavelet estimator essentially unbiased. These scaling characteristics of the magnetic field data appear to be essentially nonsteady and intermittent. The scaling properties of bursty bulk flow (BBF) and non‐BBF associated magnetic fluctuations are analyzed with the aim of understanding processes of energy transfer between scales. Small‐scale (∼0.08–0.3 s) magnetic fluctuations having the same scaling index α ∼ 2.6 as the large‐scale (∼0.7–5 s) magnetic fluctuations occur during BBF‐associated periods. During non‐BBF associated periods the energy transfer to small scales is abse...