Entropy, irreversibility and cascades in the inertial range of isotropic turbulence

Abstract

This paper analyses the turbulent energy cascade from the perspective of statistical mechanics, and relates inter-scale energy fluxes to statistical irreversibility and information-entropy production. The microscopical reversibility of the energy cascade is tested by constructing a reversible 3D turbulent system using a dynamic model for the sub-grid stresses. This system, when reversed in time, develops a sustained inverse cascade towards the large scales, evidencing that the characterisation of the inertial energy cascade must consider the possibility of an inverse regime. This experiment is used to study the origin of statistical irreversibility and the prevalence of direct over inverse energy cascades in isotropic turbulence. Statistical irreversibility, a property of statistical ensembles in phase space related to entropy production, is connected to the dynamics of the energy cascade in physical space by considering the space locality of the energy fluxes and their relation to the local structure of the flow. A mechanism to explain the probabilistic prevalence of direct energy transfer is proposed based the dynamics of the rate-of-strain tensor, which is identified as the most important source of statistical irreversibility in the energy cascade.