Onset of Intermittency and Multiscaling in Active Turbulence

TL;DR

This paper investigates how bacterial activity influences the onset of intermittency and multiscaling in active turbulence, revealing connections between living fluids and classical inertial turbulence through hydrodynamical modeling.

Contribution

It demonstrates, using a hydrodynamical model, the emergence of intermittency and multiscaling in active turbulence as bacterial activity varies, bridging biological and inertial turbulence.

Findings

Intermittency appears at certain bacterial activity levels.

Multiscaling of structure functions is observed with increased activity.

Results connect active biological flows with classical turbulence phenomena.

Abstract

Recent results suggest that highly active, chaotic, non-equilibrium states of living fluids might share much in common with high Reynolds number, inertial turbulence. We now show, by using a hydrodynamical model, the onset of intermittency and the consequent multiscaling of Eulerian and Lagrangian structure functions as a function of the bacterial activity. Our results bridge the worlds of low and high Reynolds number flows as well as open up intriguing possibilities of what makes flows intermittent.