Critical dimension for hydrodynamic turbulence

TL;DR

This paper identifies the critical space dimension d=6 for hydrodynamic turbulence, distinguishing between equilibrium and nonequilibrium behaviors using renormalization group analysis, and explores how energy flux varies with dimension.

Contribution

It introduces a recursive renormalization group approach in Craya-Herring basis to determine the critical dimension and analyze energy flux behavior in turbulence.

Findings

Critical dimension for turbulence is d=6.

Energy flux changes sign near d=2.15.

Results align with previous numerical studies.

Abstract

Hydrodynamic turbulence exhibits nonequilibrium behaviour with $k^{-5/3}$ energy spectrum, and equilibrium behaviour with $k^{d-1}$ energy spectrum and zero viscosity, where $d$ is the space dimension. Using recursive renormalization group {in Craya-Herring basis}, we show that the nonequilibrium solution is valid only for $d < 6$, whereas equilibrium solution with zero viscosity is the only solution for $d>6$. Thus, $d=6$ is the critical dimension for hydrodynamic turbulence. In addition, we show that the energy flux changes sign from positive to negative near $d=2.15$. We also compute the energy flux and Kolmogorov's constants for various $d$'s, and observe that our results are in good agreement with past numerical results.