2D turbulence in physical scales of the Navier-Stokes equations

Abstract

Local analysis of the two dimensional Navier-Stokes equations is used to obtain estimates on the energy and enstrophy fluxes involving Taylor and Kraichnan length scales and the size of the domain. In the framework of zero driving force and non-increasing global energy, these bounds produce sufficient conditions for existence of the direct enstrophy and inverse energy cascades. Several manifestations of locality of the fluxes under these conditions are obtained. All the scales involved are actual physical scales in R^2 and no homogeneity assumptions are made.