An Introduction to Large Deviations and Equilibrium Statistical Mechanics for Turbulent Flows

Abstract

Two-dimensional turbulent flows, and to some extent, geophysical flows, are systems with a large number of degrees of freedom, which, albeit fluctuating, exhibit some degree of organization: coherent structures emerge spontaneously at large scales. In this short course, we show how the principles of equilibrium statistical mechanics apply to this problem and predict the condensation of energy at large scales and allow for computing the resulting coherent structures. We focus on the structure of the theory using the language of large deviation theory.