Universality and intermittency in relativistic turbulent flows of a hot gas

TL;DR

This paper investigates the statistical properties of relativistic turbulence in hot plasmas through high-resolution simulations, revealing non-classical features and intermittency consistent with classical turbulence theories.

Contribution

It provides the first detailed analysis of relativistic turbulent flows, highlighting their intermittency and statistical similarities to classical turbulence despite relativistic effects.

Findings

Flow quantities exhibit large spatial variance even in subsonic regimes.

Velocity field shows high intermittency.

Power spectrum aligns with Kolmogorov's classical turbulence theory.

Abstract

With the aim of determining the statistical properties of relativistic turbulence and unveiling novel and non-classical features, we present the results of direct numerical simulations of driven turbulence in an ultrarelativistic hot plasma using high-order numerical schemes. We study the statistical properties of flows with average Mach number ranging from $\sim 0.4$ to $\sim 1.7$ and with average Lorentz factors up to $\sim 1.7$. We find that flow quantities, such as the energy density or the local Lorentz factor, show large spatial variance even in the subsonic case as compressibility is enhanced by relativistic effects. The velocity field is highly intermittent, but its power-spectrum is found to be in good agreement with the predictions of the classical theory of Kolmogorov.