Statistical mechanics of $d$-dimensional flows and cylindrically reduced passive scalars

Abstract

Statistical properties of $d$-dimensional incompressible flows with and without cylindrical reduction are studied, leading to several explanations and conjectures about turbulent flows and passive scalars, such as the de-correlation between the flow and scalar, reduction of passive scalar intermittency in the bottleneck regime, et al. The absolute-equilibrium analyses assure the correctness of a recent numerical result. It is implied that passive scalar(s) in two-dimensional (2D) space can be fundamentally different to those in $d>2$, concerning the correlations with the flow, which is not considered in the celebrated Kraichnan model. The possibility of genuine inverse transfer to large scales of 2D passive scalar energy, together with the advection energy, is indicated. The compressible situation is also briefly remarked in the end, in particular the absence of density in a nontrivial Casimir which, without boundary contribution, also vanishes for $d=4$.