Large-Scale Coherence and Law of Decay of Two-Dimensional Turbulence

Abstract

At the short times, the enstrophy $\Omega$ of a two-dimensional flow, generated by a random Gaussian initial condition decays as $\Omega (t)\propto t^{-\gamma }$ with $\gamma \approx 0.7$. After that, the flow undergoes transition to a different state characterized by the magnitude of the decay exponent $\gamma \approx 0.4$ (Yakhot, Wanderer, Phys.Rev.Lett.{\bf 93}, 154502 \~(2004)). It is shown that the very existence of this transition and various characteristics of evolving flow crucially depend upon phase correlation between the large-scale modes containing only a few percent of total enstrophy.

11 pages, 13 figures