Cascade time-scales for energy and helicity in homogeneous isotropic turbulence

Abstract

We extend the Kolmogorov phenomenology for the scaling of energy spectra in high-Reynolds number turbulence, to explicitly include the effect of helicity. There exists a time-scale ${\tau }_H$ for helicity transfer in homogeneous, isotropic turbulence with helicity. We arrive at this timescale using the phenomenological arguments used by Kraichnan to derive the timescale ${\tau }_E$ for energy transfer (J. Fluid Mech. {\bf 47}, 525--535 (1971)). We show that in general ${\tau }_H$ may not be neglected compared to ${\tau }_E$, even for rather low relative helicity. We then deduce an inertial range joint cascade of energy and helicity in which the dynamics are dominated by ${\tau }_E$ in the low wavenumbers with both energy and helicity spectra scaling as $k^{-5/3}$; and by ${\tau }_H$ at larger wavenumbers with spectra scaling as $k^{-4/3}$. We demonstrate how, within this phenomenology, the commonly observed ``bottleneck'' in the energy spectrum might be explained. We derive a wavenumber $k_h$ which is less than the Kolmogorov dissipation wavenumber, at which both energy and helicity cascades terminate due to dissipation effects. Data from direct numerical simulations are used to check our predictions.

14 pages, 5 figures, accepted to Physical Review E