The solar wind undergoes significant heating as it propagates away from the Sun; the exact mechanisms responsible for this heating are not yet fully understood. We present for the first time a statistical test for one of the proposed mechanisms, stochastic ion heating. We use the amplitude of magnetic field fluctuations near the proton gyroscale as a proxy for the ratio of gyroscale velocity fluctuations to perpendicular (with respect to the magnetic field) proton thermal speed, defined as $epsilon_p$. Enhanced proton temperatures are observed when $epsilon_p$ is larger than a critical value ($sim 0.019 - 0.025$). This enhancement strongly depends on the proton plasma beta ($beta_{||p}$); when $beta_{||p} ll 1$ only the perpendicular proton temperature $T_{perp}$ increases, while for $beta_{||p} sim 1$ increased parallel and perpendicular proton temperatures are both observed. For $epsilon_p$ smaller than the critical value and $beta_{||p} ll 1$ no enhancement of $T_p$ is observed while for $beta_{||p} sim 1$ minor increases in $T_{parallel}$ are measured. The observed change of proton temperatures across a critical threshold for velocity fluctuations is in agreement with the stochastic ion heating model of Chandran et al. (2010). We find that $epsilon_p > epsilon_{rm crit}$ in 76% of the studied periods implying that stochastic heating may operate most of the time in the solar wind at 1 AU.
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