Year: 2024
Type: article
Abstract: Intermittency refers to the broken self-similarity of turbulent flows caused by anomalous spatiotemporal fluctuations. In this Letter, we ask how intermittency is affected by a nondissipative viscosity, known as odd viscosity (also Hall viscosity or gyroviscosity), 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.
Source: Physical Review Letters
Language: English
Subfield: Computational Mechanics
Field: Engineering
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: green
Awards: Materials Research Science and Engineering Center, Turbulent multiphase and rarefied gas flows, G3362436182, G4657484576, Physics Frontier Center for Living Systems, Dynamics of droplets and particles in fluid jets, in turbulent flows and in rarefied gas, G7452299184, Collaborative Research: DMREF: Designer 3D Mesoscale Materials Synthesized in the Self-Assembly Foundry, Shaping turbulence with smart particles, G8048112891, G916760340
OpenAlex ID: W4402983687