Rory Cerbus

Information content of turbulence.

We treat a turbulent velocity field as a message in the same way as a book or a picture. All messages can be described by their entropy per symbol h, defined as in Shannons theory of communication. In a turbulent flow, as the Reynolds number Re increases, more correlated degrees of freedom are excited and participate in the turbulent cascade. Experiments in a turbulent soap film suggest that the spatial entropy density h is a decreasing function of Re, namely h[proportionality]-logRe + const. In the logistic map, also analyzed here, increasing the control parameter r increases h. A modified logistic map with additional coupling to past iterations suggests the significance of correlations.

The third-order structure function in two dimensions: The Rashomon effect

We study the third-order longitudinal structure function, S3(r), in two-dimensional turbulence. In three dimensions, there is considerable theoretical, experimental, and numerical consensus regarding the validity of Kolmogorov’s arch-famous “ 4 5 th law” for S3(r). By contrast, in two dimensions, two disparate cascades, changed dissipation anomalies, a large-scale drag, and other factors conspire to create several versions of the S3(r) “law.” This single quantity can vary considerably when viewed from different perspectives, reminiscent of the “Rashomon effect” in anthropology. After reviewing the history and usage of S3(r) in two-dimensional turbulence, we show that S3(r) generically embodies a mixture of energy and enstrophy fluxes. Building on this result, we derive S3(r) laws for freely decaying and forced two-dimensional turbulent flows, where we also account for the effects of a large-scale drag, an inextricable feature of quasi two-dimensional turbulence in experimental and atmospheric flows. We dr...

Janus Spectra in Two-Dimensional Flows

In large-scale atmospheric flows, soap-film flows, and other two-dimensional flows, the exponent of the turbulent energy spectra, α, may theoretically take either of two distinct values, 3 or 5/3, but measurements downstream of obstacles have invariably revealed α=3. Here we report experiments on soap-film flows where downstream of obstacles there exists a sizable interval in which α transitions from 3 to 5/3 for the streamwise fluctuations but remains equal to 3 for the transverse fluctuations, as if two mutually independent turbulent fields of disparate dynamics were concurrently active within the flow. This species of turbulent energy spectra, which we term the Janus spectra, has never been observed or predicted theoretically. Our results may open up new vistas in the study of turbulence and geophysical flows.