Complex Networks Unveiling Spatial Patterns in Turbulence

Numerical and experimental turbulence simulations are nowadays reaching the size of the so-called big data, thus requiring refined investigative tools for appropriate statistical analyses and data mining. We present a new approach based on the complex network theory, offering a powerful framework to explore complex systems with a huge number of interacting elements. Although interest on complex networks has been increasing in the last years, few recent studies have been applied to turbulence. We propose an investigation starting from a two-point correlation for the kinetic energy of a forced isotropic field numerically solved. Among all the metrics analyzed, the degree centrality is the most significant, suggesting the formation of spatial patterns which coherently move with similar vorticity over the large eddy turnover time scale. Pattern size can be quantified through a newly-introduced parameter (i.e., average physical distance) and varies from small to intermediate scales. The network analysis allows a systematic identification of different spatial regions, providing new insights into the spatial characterization of turbulent flows. Based on present findings, the application to highly inhomogeneous flows seems promising and deserves additional future investigation.Comment: 12 pages, 7 figures, 3 table

Complexity Phenomena and ROMA of the Magnetospheric Cusp, Hydrodynamic Turbulence, and the Cosmic Web

Dynamic Complexity is a phenomenon exhibited by a nonlinearly interacting system within which multitudes of different sizes of large scale coherent structures emerge, resulting in a globally nonlinear stochastic behavior vastly different from that could be surmised from the underlying equations of interaction. The hallmark of such nonlinear, complex phenomena is the appearance of intermittent fluctuating events with the mixing and distributions of correlated structures at all scales. We briefly review here a relatively recent method, ROMA (rank-ordered multifractal analysis), explicitly constructed to analyze the intricate details of the distribution and scaling of such types of intermittent structures. This method is then applied to the analyses of selected examples related to the dynamical plasmas of the cusp region of the magnetosphere, velocity fluctuations of classical hydrodynamic turbulence, and the distribution of the structures of the cosmic gas obtained through large scale, moving mesh simulations. Differences and similarities of the analyzed results among these complex systems will be contrasted and highlighted. The first two examples have direct relevance to the geospace environment and are summaries of previously reported findings. The third example on the cosmic gas, though involving phenomena much larger in spatiotemporal scales, with its highly compressible turbulent behavior and the unique simulation technique employed in generating the data, provides direct motivations of applying such analysis to studies of similar multifractal processes in various extreme environments. These new results are both exciting and intriguing.Comment: 36 page

Kolmogorov-Type Theory of Compressible Turbulence and Inviscid Limit of the Navier-Stokes Equations in R3\mathbb{R}^3

We are concerned with the inviscid limit of the Navier-Stokes equations to the Euler equations for compressible fluids in $\mathbb{R}^3$. Motivated by the Kolmogorov hypothesis (1941) for incompressible flow, we introduce a Kolmogorov-type hypothesis for barotropic flows, in which the density and the sonic speed normally vary significantly. We then observe that the compressible Kolmogorov-type hypothesis implies the uniform boundedness of some fractional derivatives of the weighted velocity and sonic speed in the space variables in $L^2$, which is independent of the viscosity coefficient $\mu>0$. It is shown that this key observation yields the equicontinuity in both space and time of the density in $L^\gamma$ and the momentum in $L^2$, as well as the uniform bound of the density in $L^{q_1}$ and the velocity in $L^{q_2}$ independent of $\mu>0$, for some fixed $q_1 >\gamma$ and $q_2 >2$, where $\gamma>1$ is the adiabatic exponent. These results lead to the strong convergence of solutions of the Navier-Stokes equations to a solution of the Euler equations for barotropic fluids in $\mathbb{R}^3$. Not only do we offer a framework for mathematical existence theories, but also we offer a framework for the interpretation of numerical solutions through the identification of a function space in which convergence should take place, with the bounds that are independent of $\mu>0$, that is in the high Reynolds number limit.Comment: 20 pages. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1008.154