Cross-helicity and residual energy in solar wind turbulence: radial evolution and latitudinal dependence in the region from 1 to 5 AU

Solar wind plasma and magnetic field measurements by Ulysses have been used to study MHD turbulence in different heliospheric regions. Four intervals of six solar rotations have been analyzed. Two of them are on the ecliptic around 2 and 5 AU, respectively, one is at midlatitude near 5 AU, and the last one is at high latitude around 3 AU. Conditions on the ecliptic are those typical of high solar activity periods. The midlatitude interval is characterized by very strong gradients in the wind speed, due to an intermittent appearance of the wind coming from the polar coronal hole. In the high-latitude interval, fully inside the polar wind, the speed is steadily high. We investigated at three different scales the level of correlation between velocity and magnetic field fluctuations, as given by the normalized cross-helicity, and the sharing of the fluctuation energy between its kinetic and magnetic component, as measured by the normalized residual energy. The observations on the ecliptic, while confirming previous findings based on Voyagers data, clearly indicate that the normalized crosshelicity is well different from zero also at distances as large as 5 AU. The midlatitude turbulence, when compared to that at low and high heliographic latitudes, appears much more evolved, with a remarkably lower normalized cross-helicity. This unambiguously highlights that processes at velocity gradients are an important factor in the turbulence evolution.