New class of turbulence in active fluids
Abstract
It is widely appreciated that turbulence is one of the main challenges of modern theoretical physics. Whereas up to now, most work in this area has been dedicated to the study of Navier-Stokes flows, numerous examples exist of systems that exhibit similar types of spatiotemporal chaos but are described by more complex nonlinear equations. One such problem of quickly growing scientific interest is turbulence in active fluids. We find that such systems can exhibit power-law energy spectra with nonuniversal exponents as a result of nonlinear self-organization, defining a new class of turbulent flows.
- Publication:
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Proceedings of the National Academy of Science
- Pub Date:
- December 2015
- DOI:
- Bibcode:
- 2015PNAS..11215048B