Nonperturbative renormalization group study of the stochastic Navier-Stokes equation

Phys Rev E Stat Nonlin Soft Matter Phys. 2012 Jul;86(1 Pt 2):016315. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevE.86.016315. Epub 2012 Jul 16.

Abstract

We study the renormalization group flow of the average action of the stochastic Navier-Stokes equation with power-law forcing. Using Galilean invariance, we introduce a nonperturbative approximation adapted to the zero-frequency sector of the theory in the parametric range of the Hölder exponent 4-2ε of the forcing where real-space local interactions are relevant. In any spatial dimension d, we observe the convergence of the resulting renormalization group flow to a unique fixed point which yields a kinetic energy spectrum scaling in agreement with canonical dimension analysis. Kolmogorov's -5/3 law is, thus, recovered for ε = 2 as also predicted by perturbative renormalization. At variance with the perturbative prediction, the -5/3 law emerges in the presence of a saturation in the ε dependence of the scaling dimension of the eddy diffusivity at ε = 3/2 when, according to perturbative renormalization, the velocity field becomes infrared relevant.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Computer Simulation
  • Models, Theoretical*
  • Rheology / methods*
  • Stochastic Processes*