Critical behaviour of a fluid in a random shear flow: Renormalization group analysis of a simplified model

Abstract

Critical behaviour of a fluid, subjected to strongly anisotropic turbulent mixing, is studied by means of the field theoretic renormalization group. As a simplified model, relaxational stochastic dynamics of a non-conserved scalar order parameter, coupled to a random velocity field with prescribed statistics, is considered. The velocity is taken Gaussian, white in time, with correlation function of the form $\propto \delta(t-t') /|{\bf k}_{\bot}|^{d+\xi}$, where ${\bf k}_{\bot}$ is the component of the wave vector, perpendicular to the distinguished direction (``direction of the flow''). It is shown that, depending on the relation between the exponent $\xi$ and the space dimensionality $d$, the system exhibits various types of large-scale self-similar behaviour, associated with different infrared attractive fixed points of the renormalization-group equations. Existence of a new, non-equilibrium and strongly anisotropic, type of critical behaviour (universality class) is established, and the corresponding critical dimensions are calculated to the second order of the double expansion in $\xi$ and $\epsilon=4-d$ (two-loop approximation). The most realistic values of the model parameters (for example, $d=3$ and the Kolmogorov exponent $\xi=4/3$) belong to this class. The scaling behaviour appears anisotropic in the sense that the critical dimensions related to the directions parallel and perpendicular to the flow are essentially different.