Infrared properties of the energy spectrum in freely decaying isotropic turbulence.

Abstract

The low wave number expansion of the energy spectrum takes the well known form E(k,t)=E_{2}(t)k^{2}+E_{4}(t)k^{4}+⋯, where the coefficients are weighted integrals against the correlation function C(r,t). We show that expressing E(k,t) in terms of the longitudinal correlation function f(r,t) immediately yields E_{2}(t)=0 by cancellation. We verify that the same result is obtained using the correlation function C(r,t), provided only that f(r,t) falls off faster than r^{-3} at large values of r. As power-law forms are widely studied for the purpose of establishing bounds, we consider the family of model correlations f(r,t)=α_{n}(t)r^{-n}, for positive integer n, at large values of the separation r. We find that for the special case n=3, the relationship connecting f(r,t) and C(r,t) becomes indeterminate, and (exceptionally) E_{2}≠0, but that this solution is unphysical in that the viscous term in the Kármán-Howarth equation vanishes. Lastly, we show that E_{4}(t) is independent of time, without needing to assume the exponential decrease of correlation functions at large distances.