Observations of Coherent and Incoherent Waves in the Near-Sun Solar Wind

Understanding how energy is transferred in the solar wind is a fundamental problem in heliophysics. A primary source of energy in the solar corona and solar wind is the ubiquitous presence of both coherent and incoherent waves. In particular, recent observations from the Parker Solar Probe (PSP) have provided compelling evidence for the role these waves play in transferring energy to the plasma, offering new insights into the microphysical processes governing solar wind dynamics. Here, we propose a new method to identify coherent and incoherent waves using measurements from PSP. Using the resulting datasets, we investigate the distribution of magnetic helicity in two-dimensional wavenumber space and examine the evolution of turbulence imbalance at sub-ion scales. These results provide new observational constraints on the formation and evolution of turbulence in the near-Sun solar wind.