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Phys Rev Lett. 2005 Jun 03;94(21):214503. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.94.214503. Epub 2005 Jun 03.

Large-scale structure of passive scalar turbulence.

Physical review letters

Antonio Celani, Agnese Seminara

Affiliations

  1. CNRS, INLN, 1361 Route des Lucioles, 06560 Valbonne, France.

PMID: 16090326 DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.94.214503

Abstract

We investigate the large-scale statistics of a passive scalar transported by a turbulent velocity field by means of direct numerical simulations. We focus on scales larger than the characteristic length scale of scalar injection, yet smaller than the correlation length of the velocity. We show the existence of nontrivial long-range correlations in the form of new power laws for the decay of high-order coarse-grained scalar cumulants. This result contradicts the classical scenario of Gibbs equilibrium statistics that should hold in the absence of scalar flux. The breakdown of "thermal equilibrium" at large scales is traced back to the statistical geometry of turbulent dispersion of two scalar blobs. The numerical values obtained for the scaling exponents of the coarse-grained scalar cumulants are in agreement with recent theoretical results.

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