Turbulence and Tsallis Statistics

Abstract

Fully-developed incompressible Navier-Stokes turbulence in three dimensions is a dissipative dynamical system that exhibits strong departure from absolute equilibrium. Nevertheless, several kinds of representation by Tsallis equilibria have been proposed. The symmetry of the contributions to the kinetic energy from the degrees of freedom of the flow must be broken in order to construct turbulence applications. Tsallis representations of turbulence involve the extrapolation of results for systems with a single degree of freedom, a procedure that requires critical examination. Theories of Tsallis statistics for acceleration of fluid particles are compared with computer simulations of the pressure gradient field in the present paper. Applications of Tsallis formulations to statistics of longitudinal velocity differences are analyzed. No flavor of equilibrium statistics based on the kinetic energy can encompass the dynamically fundamental turbulent energy cascade, which requires correlation of triads of degrees of freedom at different scales.