Isotropic polarization of compressible flows

Abstract

The helical absolute equilibrium of a compressible adiabatic flow presents not only the polarization between the two purely helical modes of opposite chiralities but also that between the vortical and acoustic modes, deviating from the equipartition predicted by {\sc Kraichnan, R. H.} [1955 The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America {\bf 27}, 438--441.]. Due to the existence of the acoustic mode, even if all Fourier modes of one chiral sector in the sharpened Helmholtz decomposition [{\sc Moses, H. E.} 1971 SIAM ~(Soc. Ind. Appl. Math.) J. Appl. Math. {\bf 21}, 114--130] are thoroughly truncated, leaving the system with positive definite helicity and energy, negative temperature and the corresponding large-scale concentration of vortical modes are not allowed, unlike the incompressible case.