Kicked Burgers Turbulence

Abstract

Burgers turbulence subject to a force $f(x,t)=\sum_jf_j(x)\delta(t-t_j)$, where the $t_j$'s are ``kicking times'' and the ``impulses'' $f_j(x)$ have arbitrary space dependence, combines features of the purely decaying and the continuously forced cases. With large-scale forcing this ``kicked'' Burgers turbulence presents many of the regimes proposed by E, Khanin, Mazel and Sinai (1997) for the case of random white-in-time forcing. It is also amenable to efficient numerical simulations in the inviscid limit, using a modification of the Fast Legendre Transform method developed for decaying Burgers turbulence by Noullez and Vergassola (1994). For the kicked case, concepts such as ``minimizers'' and ``main shock'', which play crucial roles in recent developments for forced Burgers turbulence, become elementary since everything can be constructed from simple two-dimensional area-preserving Euler--Lagrange maps. One key result is for the case of identical deterministic kicks which are periodic and analytic in space and are applied periodically in time: the probability densities of large negative velocity gradients and of (not-too-large) negative velocity increments follow the power law with -7/2 exponent proposed by E {\it et al}. (1997) in the inviscid limit, whose existence is still controversial in the case of white-in-time forcing. (More in the full-length abstract at the beginning of the paper.)