Comparison of intermittency in the solar wind, interplanetary coronal mass ejections and their sheath regions at 1 au

Interplanetary coronal mass ejections (ICMEs) and their sheath regions represent large-scale solar wind transients with distinct plasma properties compared to the solar wind. ICMEs are characterized by the presence of a large-scale flux rope, while sheaths are known for their turbulent and variable nature. At small scales, however, ICMEs, their sheaths, and the solar wind all show signs of magnetohydrodynamic turbulence. As a common property of turbulence, intermittency has been studied extensively in the solar wind and more recently also in ICMEs and their sheaths. Since intermittency manifests as non-Gaussian distributions of fluctuations, scale-dependent kurtosis is a commonly used measure for intermittency. Kurtosis is applied in different ways, with some studies using absolute or mean values of kurtosis to quantify the non-Gaussianity of the distributions at certain scales, while others use the slope of kurtosis to characterize how distributions evolve across scales. However, the interpretation of results can depend on the chosen kurtosis measure. We use data from the Wind spacecraft to study intermittency in the slow and fast solar wind, ICMEs, and ICME sheath regions. Kurtosis is computed from the local intermittency measure through wavelet analysis. Intermittency is measured both with mean values and slopes of kurtosis in the inertial range. Both measures indicate the least amount of intermittency in the fast solar wind, while some variation is observed in the case of the most intermittent plasma environment. In addition, we examine relationships between both intermittency measures and common plasma and turbulence properties.