2015/03/26 by Antoine Venaille, A Venaille, Venaille, A +6
Engineering · Physics and Astronomy · #Advanced Thermodynamics and Statistical Mechanics #Classical Physics (physics.class-ph) #FOS: Physical sciences #Fluid Dynamics (physics.flu-dyn) #Fluid Dynamics and Turbulent Flows #Statistical Mechanics (cond-mat.stat-mech) #Theoretical and Computational Physics #cond-mat.stat-mech #physics.class-ph #physics.flu-dyn
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1503.07904
openalex publication_date 2015/03/26 · arxiv created 2015/06/23 · arxiv updated 2015/06/24 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Understanding the relaxation of a system towards equilibrium is a longstanding problem in statistical mechanics. Here we address the role of long-range interactions in this process by considering a class of two-dimensional or geophysical flows where the interaction between fluid particles varies with the distance as ∼ r^(α--2) with α \textgreater 0. Previous studies in the Euler case α = 2 had shown convergence towards a variety of quasi-stationary states by changing the initial state. Unexpectedly, all those regimes are recovered by changing α with a prescribed initial state. For small α, a coarsening process leads to the formation of a sharp interface between two regions of homogenized α-vorticity; for large α, the flow is attracted to a stable dipolar structure through a filamentation process.