Viscous Instanton for Burgers' Turbulence

Abstract

We consider the tails of probability density functions (PDF) for different characteristics of velocity that satisfies Burgers equation driven by a large-scale force. The saddle-point approximation is employed in the path integral so that the calculation of the PDF tails boils down to finding the special field-force configuration (instanton) that realizes the extremum of probability. We calculate high moments of the velocity gradient $\partial_xu$ and find out that they correspond to the PDF with $\ln[{\cal P}(\partial_xu)]\propto-(-\partial_xu/{\rm Re})^{3/2}$ where ${\rm Re}$ is the Reynolds number. That stretched exponential form is valid for negative $\partial_xu$ with the modulus much larger than its root-mean-square (rms) value. The respective tail of PDF for negative velocity differences $w$ is steeper than Gaussian, $\ln{\cal P}(w)\sim-(w/u_{\rm rms})^3$, as well as single-point velocity PDF $\ln{\cal P}(u)\sim-(|u|/u_{\rm rms})^3$. For high velocity derivatives $u^{(k)}=\partial_x^ku$, the general formula is found: $\ln{\cal P}(|u^{(k)}|)\propto -(|u^{(k)}|/{\rm Re}^k)^{3/(k+1)}$.