Spinodal decomposition in homogeneous and isotropic turbulence.
We study the competition between domain coarsening in a symmetric binary mixture below critical temperature and turbulent fluctuations. We find that the coarsening process is arrested in the presence of turbulence. The physics of the process shares remarkable similarities with the behavior of diluted turbulent emulsions and the arrest length scale can be estimated with an argument similar to the one proposed by Kolmogorov and Hinze for the maximal stability diameter of droplets in turbulence. Although, in the absence of flow, the microscopic diffusion constant is negative, turbulence does effectively arrest the inverse cascade of concentration fluctuations by making the low wavelength diffusion constant positive for scales above the Hinze length.
Department of Physics and J.M. Burgerscentrum, Eindhoven University of Technology, 5600 MB Eindhoven, The Netherlands; and International Collaboration for Turbulence Research and TIFR Centre for Interdisciplinary Sciences, 21 Brundavan Colony, Narsingi, Hyderabad 500075, India.
Prasad
P
Perlekar
Dipartimento di Fisica and INFN, Università "Tor Vergata", Via della Ricerca Scientifica 1, I-00133 Roma, Italy.
Roberto
R
Benzi
Department of Physics and J.M. Burgerscentrum, Eindhoven University of Technology, 5600 MB Eindhoven, The Netherlands; and International Collaboration for Turbulence Research.
Herman J H
HJ
Clercx
Lyman Laboratory of Physics, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138, USA.
David R
DR
Nelson
Department of Physics and J.M. Burgerscentrum, Eindhoven University of Technology, 5600 MB Eindhoven, The Netherlands; and International Collaboration for Turbulence Research and Department of Mathematics and Computer Science, Eindhoven University of Technology, 5600 MB Eindhoven, The Netherlands and CNR, Istituto per le Applicazioni del Calcolo, Via dei Taurini 19, 00185 Rome, Italy.
Federico
F
Toschi