Structure Functions and Intermittency for Coarsening Systems

Abstract

In studies of turbulence, there has been extensive use of physical quantities such as {\it energy transfers} and {\it structure functions}. We examine whether these quantities can be useful in understanding problems of domain growth or coarsening, as modeled by the {\it time-dependent Ginzburg-Landau} (TDGL) equation and the {\it Cahn-Hilliard} (CH) equation. This paper has two major themes. First, we review our recent papers on energy transfers in domain growth. Second, we study structure functions and intermittency for coarsening systems. As a consequence of sharp interfaces, the structure functions scale as $S_q \sim r^{\zeta_q}$, where $r$ is the distance between two points. For the TDGL and CH models, $\zeta_q = 1$, indicating {\it anomalous scaling}