Renormalization and universality of blowup in hydrodynamic flows

Abstract

We consider self-similar solutions describing intermittent bursts in shell models of turbulence, and study their relationship with blowup phenomena in continuous hydrodynamic models. First, we show that these solutions are very close to self-similar solution for the Fourier transformed inviscid Burgers equation corresponding to shock formation from smooth initial data. Then, the result is generalized to hyperbolic conservation laws in one space dimension describing compressible flows. It is shown that the renormalized wave profile tends to a universal function, which is independent both of initial conditions and of a specific form of the conservation law. This phenomenon can be viewed as a new manifestation of the renormalization group theory. Finally, we discuss possibilities for application of the developed theory for detecting and describing a blowup in incompressible flows.