Random Changes of Flow Topology in Two-Dimensional and Geophysical Turbulence

2008/04/14 by Freddy Bouchet, Eric Simonnet · 6 citations
Earth and Planetary Sciences · Economics, Econometrics and Finance · Engineering · Physics and Astronomy · #Fluid Dynamics and Turbulent Flows #Meteorological Phenomena and Simulations #Stochastic processes and financial applications #cond-mat.stat-mech #nlin.CD #physics.class-ph

paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevlett.102.094504

4 pages, 3 figures

arxiv created 2008/04/14 · openalex publication_date 2009/03/04 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28

Abstract

We study the two-dimensional (2D) stochastic Navier-Stokes (SNS) equations in the inertial limit of weak forcing and dissipation. The stationary measure is concentrated close to steady solutions of the 2D Euler equations. For such inertial flows, we prove that bifurcations in the flow topology occur either by changing the domain shape, the nonlinearity of the vorticity-stream-function relation, or the energy. Associated with this, we observe bistable behavior in SNS with random changes from dipoles to unidirectional flows. The theoretical explanation being very general, we infer the existence of similar phenomena in experiments and in some regimes of geophysical flows.

Citations

• Inertial Ranges in Two-Dimensional Turbulence

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