SKM 2023 – scientific programme
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DY: Fachverband Dynamik und Statistische Physik
DY 5: Fluid Physics: Turbulence and Convection
DY 5.3: Talk
Monday, March 27, 2023, 10:15–10:30, MOL 213
Spontaneous symmetry breaking for extreme vorticity and strain in the three-dimensional Navier-Stokes equations — •Timo Schorlepp1, Tobias Grafke2, Sandra May3, and Rainer Grauer1 — 1Institute for Theoretical Physics I, Ruhr-University Bochum, Germany — 2Mathematics Institute, University of Warwick, United Kingdom — 3Department of Mathematics, TU Dortmund University, Germany
We investigate the spatio-temporal structure of the most likely configurations realizing extremely high vorticity or strain in the stochastically forced three-dimensional incompressible Navier-Stokes equations. Most likely configurations are computed by numerically finding the highest probability velocity field realizing an extreme constraint as solution of a large optimization problem. High-vorticity configurations are identified as pinched vortex filaments with swirl, while high-strain configurations correspond to counter-rotating vortex rings. We additionally observe that the most likely configurations for vorticity and strain spontaneously break their rotational symmetry for extremely high observable values. Instanton calculus and large deviation theory allow us to show that these maximum likelihood realizations determine the tail probabilities of the observed quantities. In particular, we are able to demonstrate that artificially enforcing rotational symmetry for large strain configurations leads to a severe underestimate of their probability, as it is dominated in likelihood by an exponentially more likely symmetry-broken vortex-sheet configuration.