arXiv subjects

Uriel Frisch

Publications and source records attributed to Uriel Frisch.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2025

Large-scale multifractality and lack of self-similar decay for Burgers and 3D Navier-Stokes turbulence

We study decaying turbulence in the 1D Burgers equation (Burgulence) and 3D Navier-Stokes (NS) turbulence. We first investigate the decay in time $t$ of the energy $E(t)$ in Burgulence, for a fractional Brownian initial potential, with Hurst exponent $H$, and demonstrate rigorously a self-similar time-decay of $E(t)$, previously determined heuristically. This is a consequence of the nontrivial boundedness of the energy for any positive time. We define a spatially forgetful \textit{oblivious fractional Brownian motion} (OFBM), with Hurst exponent $H$, and prove that Burgulence, with an OFBM as initial potential $\varphi_0(x)$, is not only intermittent, but it also displays, a hitherto unanticipated, large-scale bifractality or multifractality; the latter occurs if we combine OFBMs, with different values of $H$. This is the first rigorous proof of genuine multifractality for turbulence in a nonlinear hydrodynamical partial differential equation. We then present direct numerical simulations (DNSs) of freely decaying turbulence, capturing some aspects of this multifractality. For Burgulence, we investigate such decay for two cases: (A) $\varphi_0(x)$ a multifractal random walk that crosses over to a fractional Brownian motion beyond a crossover scale $\mathcal{L}$, tuned to go from small- to large-scale multifractality; (B) initial energy spectra $E_0(k)$, with wavenumber $k$, having one or more power-law regions, which lead, respectively, to self-similar and non-self-similar energy decay. Our analogous DNSs of the 3D NS equations also uncover self-similar and non-self-similar energy decay. Challenges confronting the detection of genuine large-scale multifractality, in numerical and experimental studies of NS and MHD turbulence, are highlighted.

physics.flu-dyn↗

arXiv2022

Eye of the Tyger: early-time resonances and singularities in the inviscid Burgers equation

We chart a singular landscape in the temporal domain of the inviscid Burgers equation in one space dimension for sine-wave initial conditions. These so far undetected complex singularities are arranged in an eye shape centered around the origin in time. Interestingly, since the eye is squashed along the imaginary time axis, complex-time singularities can become physically relevant at times well before the first real singularity -- the pre-shock. Indeed, employing a time-Taylor representation for the velocity around $t=0$, loss of convergence occurs roughly at 2/3 of the pre-shock time for the considered single- and multi-mode models. Furthermore, the loss of convergence is accompanied by the appearance of initially localized resonant behaviour which, as we claim, is a temporal manifestation of the so-called tyger phenomenon, reported in Galerkin-truncated implementations of inviscid fluids [Ray et al., Phys. Rev. E 84, 016301 (2011)]. We support our findings of early-time tygers with two complementary and independent means, namely by an asymptotic analysis of the time-Taylor series for the velocity, as well as by a novel singularity theory that employs Lagrangian coordinates. Finally, we apply two methods that reduce the amplitude of early-time tygers, one is tyger purging which removes large Fourier modes from the velocity, and is a variant of a procedure known in the literature. The other method realizes an iterative UV completion, which, most interestingly, iteratively restores the conservation of energy once the Taylor series for the velocity diverges. Our techniques are straightforwardly adapted to higher dimensions and/or applied to other equations of hydrodynamics.

physics.flu-dyn↗

arXiv2020

Suppressing thermalization and constructing weak solutions in truncated inviscid equations of hydrodynamics: Lessons from the Burgers equation

Finite-dimensional, inviscid equations of hydrodynamics, such as the zero-viscosity, one-dimensional Burgers equation or the three-dimensional incompressible Euler equation, obtained through a Fourier-Galerkin projection, thermalise---mediated through structures known as tygers [Ray et al., Phys. Rev. E 84, 016301 (2011)]---with an energy equipartition. Therefore, numerical solutions of inviscid partial differential equations, which typically have to be Galerkin-truncated, show a behaviour at odds with the parent equation. We now propose, by using the one-dimensional Burgers equation as a testing ground, a novel numerical recipe, named tyger purging, to arrest the onset of thermalisation and hence recover the true dissipative solution.

physics.flu-dyn↗

arXiv2019

Unveiling the singular dynamics in the cosmic large-scale structure

It is known that the gravitational collapse of cold dark matter leads to infinite-density caustics that seed the primordial dark-matter halos in the large-scale structure. The development of these caustics begins, generically, as an almost one-dimensional phenomenon with the formation of pancakes. Focusing on the one-dimensional case, we identify a landscape of non-differentiable, and thus, singular features in the particle acceleration that emerge after the first crossing of particle trajectories. We complement our fully analytical studies by high-resolution simulations and find outstanding agreement, particularly shortly after the first crossing. We develop the methods in one space dimension but outline briefly the necessary steps for the 3D case.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2017

A contemporary look at Hermann Hankel's 1861 pioneering work on Lagrangian fluid dynamics

The present paper is a companion to the paper by Villone and Rampf (2017), titled "Hermann Hankel's On the general theory of motion of fluids, an essay including an English translation of the complete Preisschrift from 1861" together with connected documents. Here we give a critical assessment of Hankel's work, which covers many important aspects of fluid dynamics considered from a Lagrangian-coordinates point of view: variational formulation in the spirit of Hamilton for elastic (barotropic) fluids, transport (we would now say Lie transport) of vorticity, the Lagrangian significance of Clebsch variables, etc. Hankel's work is also put in the perspective of previous and future work. Hence, the action spans about two centuries: from Lagrange's 1760-1761 Turin paper on variational approaches to mechanics and fluid mechanics problems to Arnold's 1966 founding paper on the geometrical/variational formulation of incompressible flow. The 22-year old Hankel - who was to die 12 years later - emerges as a highly innovative master of mathematical fluid dynamics, fully deserving Riemann's assessment that his Preisschrift contains "all manner of good things."

math.HO↗

arXiv2017

Shell-crossing in quasi-one-dimensional flow

Blow-up of solutions for the cosmological fluid equations, often dubbed shell-crossing or orbit crossing, denotes the breakdown of the single-stream regime of the cold-dark-matter fluid. At this instant, the velocity becomes multi-valued and the density singular. Shell-crossing is well understood in one dimension (1D), but not in higher dimensions. This paper is about quasi-one-dimensional (Q1D) flow that depends on all three coordinates but differs only slightly from a strictly 1D flow, thereby allowing a perturbative treatment of shell-crossing using the Euler--Poisson equations written in Lagrangian coordinates. The signature of shell-crossing is then just the vanishing of the Jacobian of the Lagrangian map, a regular perturbation problem. In essence the problem of the first shell-crossing, which is highly singular in Eulerian coordinates, has been desingularized by switching to Lagrangian coordinates, and can then be handled by perturbation theory. Here, all-order recursion relations are obtained for the time-Taylor coefficients of the displacement field, and it is shown that the Taylor series has an infinite radius of convergence. This allows the determination of the time and location of the first shell-crossing, which is generically shown to be taking place earlier than for the unperturbed 1D flow. The time variable used for these statements is not the cosmic time $t$ but the linear growth time $τ\sim t^{2/3}$. For simplicity, calculations are restricted to an Einstein--de Sitter universe in the Newtonian approximation, and tailored initial data are used. However it is straightforward to relax these limitations, if needed.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2017

Geometric formulation of the Cauchy invariants for incompressible Euler flow in flat and curved spaces

Cauchy invariants are now viewed as a powerful tool for investigating the Lagrangian structure of three-dimensional (3D) ideal flow (Frisch & Zheligovsky, Commun. Math. Phys., vol. 326, 2014, pp. 499-505, Podvigina et al., J. Comput. Phys., vol. 306, 2016, pp. 320-342). Looking at such invariants with the modern tools of differential geometry and of geodesic flow on the space SDiff of volume-preserving transformations (Arnold, Ann. Inst. Fourier, vol. 16, 1966, pp. 319-361), all manners of generalisations are here derived. The Cauchy invariants equation and the Cauchy formula, relating the vorticity and the Jacobian of the Lagrangian map, are shown to be two expressions of this Lie-advection invariance, which are duals of each other (specifically, Hodge dual). Actually, this is shown to be an instance of a general result, which holds for flow both in flat (Euclidean) space and in a curved Riemannian space: any Lie-advection invariant p-form which is exact (i.e. is a differential of a (p-1)-form) has an associated Cauchy invariants equation and a Cauchy formula. This constitutes a new fundamental result in linear transport theory, providing a Lagrangian formulation of Lie advection for some classes of differential forms. The result has a broad applicability: examples include the magnetohydrodynamics (MHD) equations and various extensions thereof, discussed by Lingam et al. (Phys. Lett. A, vol. 380, 2016, pp. 2400-2406), and include also the equations of Tao (2016, arXiv:1606.08481 [math.AP]), Euler equations with modified Biot-Savart law, displaying finite-time blow-up. Our main result is also used for new derivations, and several new results, concerning local helicity-type invariants for fluids and MHD flow in flat or curved spaces of arbitrary dimension.

physics.flu-dyn↗

arXiv2016

A constructive approach to regularity of Lagrangian trajectories for incompressible Euler flow in a bounded domain

The 3D incompressible Euler equation is an important research topic in the mathematical study of fluid dynamics. Not only is the global regularity for smooth initial data an open issue, but the behaviour may also depend on the presence or absence of boundaries. For a good understanding, it is crucial to carry out, besides mathematical studies, high-accuracy and well-resolved numerical exploration. Such studies can be very demanding in computational resources, but recently it has been shown that very substantial gains can be achieved first, by using Cauchy's Lagrangian formulation of the Euler equations and second, by taking advantages of analyticity results of the Lagrangian trajectories for flows whose initial vorticity is Hölder-continuous. The latter has been known for about twenty years (Serfati, 1995), but the combination of the two, which makes use of recursion relations among time-Taylor coefficients to obtain constructively the time-Taylor series of the Lagrangian map, has been achieved only recently (Frisch and Zheligovsky, 2014; Podvigina {\em et al.}, 2016 and references therein). Here we extend this methodology to incompressible Euler flow in an impermeable bounded domain whose boundary may be either analytic or have a regularity between indefinite differentiability and analyticity. Non-constructive regularity results for these cases have already been obtained by Glass {\em et al.} (2012). Using the invariance of the boundary under the Lagrangian flow, we establish novel recursion relations that include contributions from the boundary. This leads to a constructive proof of time-analyticity of the Lagrangian trajectories with analytic boundaries, which can then be used subsequently for the design of a very high-order Cauchy--Lagrangian method.

math.AP↗

arXiv2016

Intermittency in fractal Fourier hydrodynamics: Lessons from the Burgers Equation

We present theoretical and numerical results for the one-dimensional stochastically forced Burgers equation decimated on a fractal Fourier set of dimension $D$. We investigate the robustness of the energy transfer mechanism and of the small-scale statistical fluctuations by changing $D$. We find that a very small percentage of mode-reduction ($D \lesssim 1$) is enough to destroy most of the characteristics of the original non-decimated equation. In particular, we observe a suppression of intermittent fluctuations for $D <1$ and a quasi-singular transition from the fully intermittent ($D=1$) to the non-intermittent case for $D \lesssim 1$. Our results indicate that the existence of strong localized structures (shocks) in the one-dimensional Burgers equation is the result of highly entangled correlations amongst all Fourier modes.

physics.flu-dyn↗

arXiv2015

How smooth are particle trajectories in a $Λ$CDM Universe?

It is shown here that in a flat, cold dark matter (CDM) dominated Universe with positive cosmological constant ($Λ$), modelled in terms of a Newtonian and collisionless fluid, particle trajectories are analytical in time (representable by a convergent Taylor series) until at least a finite time after decoupling. The time variable used for this statement is the cosmic scale factor, i.e., the "$a$-time", and not the cosmic time. For this, a Lagrangian-coordinates formulation of the Euler-Poisson equations is employed, originally used by Cauchy for 3-D incompressible flow. Temporal analyticity for $Λ$CDM is found to be a consequence of novel explicit all-order recursion relations for the $a$-time Taylor coefficients of the Lagrangian displacement field, from which we derive the convergence of the $a$-time Taylor series. A lower bound for the $a$-time where analyticity is guaranteed and shell-crossing is ruled out is obtained, whose value depends only on $Λ$ and on the initial spatial smoothness of the density field. The largest time interval is achieved when $Λ$ vanishes, i.e., for an Einstein-de Sitter universe. Analyticity holds also if, instead of the $a$-time, one uses the linear structure growth $D$-time, but no simple recursion relations are then obtained. The analyticity result also holds when a curvature term is included in the Friedmann equation for the background, but inclusion of a radiation term arising from the primordial era spoils analyticity.

astro-ph.CO↗

arXiv2014

Cauchy's almost forgotten Lagrangian formulation of the Euler equation for 3D incompressible flow

Two prized papers, one by Augustin Cauchy in 1815, presented to the French Academy and the other by Hermann Hankel in 1861, presented to Göttingen University, contain major discoveries on vorticity dynamics whose impact is now quickly increasing. Cauchy found a Lagrangian formulation of 3D ideal incompressible flow in terms of three invariants that generalize to three dimensions the now well-known law of conservation of vorticity along fluid particle trajectories for two-dimensional flow. This has very recently been used to prove analyticity in time of fluid particle trajectories for 3D incompressible Euler flow and can be extended to compressible flow, in particular to cosmological dark matter. Hankel showed that Cauchy's formulation gives a very simple Lagrangian derivation of the Helmholtz vorticity-flux invariants and, in the middle of the proof, derived an intermediate result which is the conservation of the circulation of the velocity around a closed contour moving with the fluid. This circulation theorem was to be rediscovered independently by William Thomson (Kelvin) in 1869. Cauchy's invariants were only occasionally cited in the 19th century --- besides Hankel, foremost by George Stokes and Maurice Lévy --- and even less so in the 20th until they were rediscovered via Emmy Noether's theorem in the late 1960, but reattributed to Cauchy only at the end of the 20th century by Russian scientists.

math.HO↗

arXiv2014

Time-analyticity of Lagrangian particle trajectories in ideal fluid flow

It is known that the Eulerian and Lagrangian structures of fluid flow can be drastically different; for example, ideal fluid flow can have a trivial (static) Eulerian structure, while displaying chaotic streamlines. Here we show that ideal flow with limited spatial smoothness (an initial vorticity that is just a little better than continuous), nevertheless has time-analytic Lagrangian trajectories before the initial limited smoothness is lost. For proving such results we use a little-known Lagrangian formulation of ideal fluid flow derived by Cauchy in 1815 in a manuscript submitted for a prize of the French Academy. This formulation leads to simple recurrence relations among the time-Taylor coefficients of the Lagrangian map from initial to current fluid particle positions; the coefficients can then be bounded using elementary methods. We first consider various classes of incompressible fluid flow, governed by the Euler equations, and then turn to a case of compressible flow of cosmological relevance, governed by the Euler-Poisson equations.

math.AP↗

arXiv2012

Real-space Manifestations of Bottlenecks in Turbulence Spectra

An energy-spectrum bottleneck, a bump in the turbulence spectrum between the inertial and dissipation ranges, is shown to occur in the non-turbulent, one-dimensional, hyperviscous Burgers equation and found to be the Fourier-space signature of oscillations in the real-space velocity, which are explained by boundary-layer-expansion techniques. Pseudospectral simulations are used to show that such oscillations occur in velocity correlation functions in one- and three-dimensional hyperviscous hydrodynamical equations that display genuine turbulence.

nlin.CD↗

arXiv2012

Optimal transport by omni-potential flow and cosmological reconstruction

One of the simplest models used in studying the dynamics of large-scale structure in cosmology, known as the Zeldovich approximation, is equivalent to the three-dimensional inviscid Burgers equation for potential flow. For smooth initial data and sufficiently short times it has the property that the mapping of the positions of fluid particles at any time $t_1$ to their positions at any time $t_2\ge t_1$ is the gradient of a convex potential, a property we call omni-potentiality. Are there other flows with this property, that are not straightforward generalizations of Zeldovich flows? This is answered in the affirmative in both two and three dimensions. How general are such flows? Using a WKB technique we show that in two dimensions, for sufficiently short times, there are omni-potential flows with arbitrary smooth initial velocity. Mappings with a convex potential are known to be associated with the quadratic-cost optimal transport problem. This has important implications for the problem of reconstructing the dynamical history of the Universe from the knowledge of the present mass distribution.

math.AP↗

arXiv2012

Nelkin scaling for the Burgers equation and the role of high-precision calculations

Nelkin scaling, the scaling of moments of velocity gradients in terms of the Reynolds number, is an alternative way of obtaining inertial-range information. It is shown numerically and theoretically for the Burgers equation that this procedure works already for Reynolds numbers of the order of 100 (or even lower when combined with a suitable extended self-similarity technique). At moderate Reynolds numbers, for the accurate determination of scaling exponents, it is crucial to use higher than double precision. Similar issues are likely to arise for three-dimensional Navier--Stokes simulations.

nlin.CD↗

arXiv2011

Turbulence in non-integer dimensions by fractal Fourier decimation

Fractal decimation reduces the effective dimensionality of a flow by keeping only a (randomly chosen) set of Fourier modes whose number in a ball of radius $k$ is proportional to $k^D$ for large $k$. At the critical dimension D=4/3 there is an equilibrium Gibbs state with a $k^{-5/3}$ spectrum, as in [V. L'vov {\it et al.}, Phys. Rev. Lett. {\bf 89}, 064501 (2002)]. Spectral simulations of fractally decimated two-dimensional turbulence show that the inverse cascade persists below D=2 with a rapidly rising Kolmogorov constant, likely to diverge as $(D-4/3)^{-2/3}$.

nlin.CD↗

arXiv2010

Robert H. Kraichnan

Robert Harry Kraichnan {(1928-2008)} was one of the leaders in the theory of turbulence for a span of about forty years (mid-fifties to mid-nineties). Among his many contributions, he is perhaps best known for his work on the inverse energy cascade (i.e. from small to large scales) for forced two-dimensional turbulence. This is a review of Kraichnan's main scientific contributions.

physics.hist-ph↗

arXiv2010

Resonance phenomenon for the Galerkin-truncated Burgers and Euler equations

It is shown that the solutions of inviscid hydrodynamical equations with suppression of all spatial Fourier modes having wavenumbers in excess of a threshold $K_G$ exhibit unexpected features. The study is carried out for both the one-dimensional Burgers equation and the two-dimensional incompressible Euler equation. For large $K_G$ and smooth initial conditions, the first symptom of truncation, a localized short-wavelength oscillation which we call a "tyger", is caused by a resonant interaction between fluid particle motion and truncation waves generated by small-scale features (shocks, layers with strong vorticity gradients, etc). Tygers appear when complex-space singularities come within one Galerkin wavelength $\lambdag = 2\pi/K_G$ from the real domain and arise far away from preexisting small-scale structures at locations whose velocities match that of such structures. Tygers are weak and strongly localized at first - in the Burgers case at the time of appearance of the first shock their amplitudes and widths are proportional to $K_G^{-2/3}$ and $K_G ^{-1/3}$ respectively - but grow and eventually invade the whole flow. They are thus the first manifestations of the thermalization predicted by T.D. Lee in 1952. The sudden dissipative anomaly - the presence of a finite dissipation in the limit of vanishing viscosity after a finite time $t_\star$ -, which is well known for the Burgers equation and sometimes conjectured for the 3D Euler equation, has as counterpart, in the truncated case, the ability of tygers to store a finite amount of energy in the limit $K_G\to\infty$. This leads to Reynolds stresses acting on scales larger than the Galerkin wavelength and prevents the flow from converging to the inviscid-limit solution. There are indications that it may eventually be possible to purge the tygers and thereby to recover the correct inviscid-limit behavior.

nlin.CD↗