Pattern formation by turbulent cascades.

ABSTRACT: Fully developed turbulence is a universal and scale-invariant chaotic state characterized by an energy cascade from large to small scales at which the cascade is eventually arrested by dissipation^1-6. Here we show how to harness these seemingly structureless turbulent cascades to generate patterns. Pattern formation entails a process of wavelength selection, which can usually be traced to the linear instability of a homogeneous state⁷. By contrast, the mechanism we propose here is fully nonlinear. It is triggered by the non-dissipative arrest of turbulent cascades: energy piles up at an intermediate scale, which is neither the system size nor the smallest scales at which energy is usually dissipated. Using a combination of theory and large-scale simulations, we show t

SUBMITTER: de Wit XM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10954557 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature