ANOMALOUS DIMENSIONS IN TURBULENCE

Abstract

A time-independent field theoretical framework for turbulence is suggested, based upon a variational principle for a stationary solution of the Fokker—Planck equation. We obtain a functional equation for the effective Action of this spatial field theory and investigate its general properties and some numerical solutions. The equation is completely universal, and allows for the scale invariant solutions in the inertial range. The critical indices are not fixed at the kinematical level, but rather should be found from certain eigenvalue conditions, as in the field theory of critical phenomena. Unlike the Wyld field theory, there are no divergences in our Feynman integrals, due to some magic cancellations. The simplest possible Gaussian approximation yields crude but still reasonable results (there are deviations from Kolmogorov scaling in 3 dimensions, but at 2.7544 dimensions it would be exact). Our approach allows us to study some new problems, such as spontaneous parity breaking in 3d turbulence. It turns out that with the appropriate helicity term added to the velocity correlation function, logarithmic infrared divergences arise in our field theory which effectively eliminates these terms. In order to build a quantitative theory of turbulence, one should consider more sophisticated Ansatz for the effective Action, which would require serious numerical work.