Spontaneous stochasticity and the Armstrong-Vicol passive scalar

Abstract

Spontaneous stochasticity refers to the emergence of intrinsic randomness in deterministic systems under singular limits, a phenomenon conjectured to be fundamental in turbulence. Armstrong and Vicol \citep{AV23,AV24} recently constructed a deterministic, divergence-free multiscale vector field arbitrarily close to a weak Euler solution, proving that a passive scalar transported by this field exhibits anomalous dissipation and lacks a selection principle in the vanishing diffusivity limit. {\it This work aims to explain why this passive scalar exhibits both Lagrangian and Eulerian spontaneous stochasticity.} Part I provides a historical overview of spontaneous stochasticity, details the Armstrong-Vicol passive scalar model, and presents numerical evidence of anomalous diffusion, along with a refined description of the Lagrangian flow map. In Part II, we develop a theoretical framework for Eulerian spontaneous stochasticity. We define it mathematically, linking it to ill-posedness and finite-time trajectory splitting, and explore its measure-theoretic properties and the connection to RG formalism. This leads us to a well-defined {\it measure selection principle} in the inviscid limit. This approach allows us to rigorously classify universality classes based on the ergodic properties of regularisations. To complement our analysis, we provide simple yet insightful numerical examples. Finally, we show that the absence of a selection principle in the Armstrong-Vicol model corresponds to Eulerian spontaneous stochasticity of the passive scalar. We also numerically compute the probability density of the effective renormalised diffusivity in the inviscid limit. We argue that the lack of a selection principle should be understood as a measure selection principle over weak solutions of the inviscid system.