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Since Kolmogorov proposed his phenomenological theory of hydrodynamic turbulence in 1941, the description of the mechanism leading to the energy cascade and anomalous scaling remains an open problem in fluid mechanics. Soon after, in 1949, Onsager noticed that the scaling properties in the inerţial range imply nondifferentiability of the velocity field in the limit of vanishing viscosity. This observation suggests that the turbulence mechanism may be related to a finite-time singularity (blowup) of incompressible Euler equations. However, the existence of such blowup is still an open problem too. In this paper, we show that the blowup . indeed represents the driving mechanism of the inerţial range for a simplified (shell) model of turbulence. Here, blowups generate coherent structures (instantons), which travel through the inerţial range in finite time and are described by universal self-similar statistics. The anomaly (deviation of scaling exponents of velocity moments from the Kolmogorov theory) is related analytically to the process of instanton creation using the large deviation principle. The results are confirmed by numerical simulations [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We show that multiscaling properties of developed turbulence in shell models, which lead to anomalous scaling exponents in the inertial range, are determined exclusively by instanton dynamics. Instantons represent correlated extreme events localized in space-time, whose structure is described by self-similar statistics with a single universal scaling exponent. We show that anomalous scaling exponents appear due to the process of instanton creation. A simplified model of instanton creation is suggested, which adequately describes this anomaly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We consider self-similar solutions describing intermittent bursts in shell models of turbulence and study their relationship with blowup phenomena in continuous hydrodynamic models. First, we show that these solutions are very close to self-similar solution for the Fourier transformed inviscid Burgers equation corresponding to shock formation from smooth initial data. Then, the result is generalized to hyperbolic conservation laws in one space dimension describing compressible flows. It is shown that the renormahzed wave profile tends to a universal function, which is independent both of initial conditions and of a specific form of the conservation law. This phenomenon can be viewed as a new manifestation of the renormalization group theory. Finally, we discuss possibilities for application of the developed theory for detecting and describing a blowup in incompressible flows. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Following the exact decomposition in eigenstates of helicity for the Navier-Stokes equations in Fourier space [F. Waleffe, Phys. Fluids A 4, 350 (1992)], we introduce a modified version of helical shell models for turbulence with nonlocal triadic interactions. By using both an analytical argument and numerical simulation, we show that there exists a class of models, with a specific helical structure, that exhibits a statistically stable inverse energy cascade, in close analogy with that predicted for the Navier-Stokes equations restricted to the same helical interactions. We further support the idea that turbulent energy transfer is the result of a strong entanglement among triads possessing different transfer properties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]