English

Clebsch Confinement and Instantons in Turbulence

High Energy Physics - Theory 2020-11-12 v7

Abstract

We introduce a concept of Clebsch confinement related to unbroken gauge invariance and study Clebsch instantons: singular vorticity sheets with nontrivial helicity. This is realization of the "Instantons and intermittency" program we started back in the 90ties\cite{FKLM}. These singular solutions are involved in enhancing infinitesimal random forces at remote boundary leading to critical phenomena. In the Euler equation vorticity is concentrated along the random self-avoiding surface, with tangent components proportional to the delta function of normal distance. Viscosity in Navier-Stokes equation smears this delta function to the Gaussian with width hν\nicefrac35h \propto \nu^{\nicefrac{3}{5}} at ν\ra0\nu \ra 0 with fixed energy flow. These instantons dominate the enstrophy in dissipation as well as the PDF for velocity circulation ΓC\Gamma_C around fixed loop CC in space. At large loops, the resulting symmetric exponential distribution perfectly fits the numerical simulations\cite{IBS20} including pre-exponential factor 1/Γ1/\sqrt{|\Gamma|}. At small loops, we advocate relation of resulting random self-avoiding surface theory with multi-fractal scaling laws observed in numerical simulations. These laws are explained as a result of fluctuating internal metric (Liouville field). The curve of anomalous dimensions ζ(n)\zeta(n) can be fitted at small nn to the parabola, coming from the Liouville theory with two parameters α,Q\alpha, Q. At large nn the ratios of the subsequent moments in our theory grow linearly with the size of the loop, which corresponds to finite value of ζ()\zeta(\infty) in agreement with DNS.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2007.12468,
  title  = {Clebsch Confinement and Instantons in Turbulence},
  author = {Alexander Migdal},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2007.12468},
  year   = {2020}
}

Comments

Invited review article for Int. J. of Mod. Phys. A. 67 pages, 10 figures, 1 table

R2 v1 2026-06-23T17:22:28.260Z