2024/04/29 by Sihan Chen, Chen, Sihan, Xander M. de Wit +7 · 1 citation
Earth and Planetary Sciences · Engineering · #FOS: Physical sciences #Fluid Dynamics (physics.flu-dyn) #Fluid Dynamics and Turbulent Flows #Meteorological Phenomena and Simulations #Particle Dynamics in Fluid Flows #Soft Condensed Matter (cond-mat.soft)
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2404.18894
openalex publication_date 2024/04/29 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Intermittency refers to the broken self-similarity of turbulent flows caused by anomalous spatio-temporal fluctuations. In this Letter, we ask how intermittency is affected by a non-dissipative viscosity, known as odd viscosity (also Hall or gyro-viscosity), which appears in parity-breaking fluids such as magnetized polyatomic gases, electron fluids under magnetic field and spinning colloids or grains. Using a combination of Navier-Stokes simulations and theory, we show that intermittency is suppressed by odd viscosity at small scales. This effect is caused by parity-breaking waves, induced by odd viscosity, that break the multiple scale invariances of the Navier-Stokes equations. Building on this insight, we construct a two-channel helical shell model that reproduces the basic phenomenology of turbulent odd-viscous fluids including the suppression of anomalous scaling. Our findings illustrate how a fully developed direct cascade that is entirely self-similar can emerge below a tunable length scale, paving the way for designing turbulent flows with adjustable levels of intermittency.