Fluctuation relations at large scales in three-dimensional hydrodynamic turbulence

Abstract It has long been conjectured that, in three-dimensional turbulence, velocity modes at scales larger than the forcing scale follow equilibrium dynamics. Recent numerical and experimental evidence shows that such modes share the same mean energy and therefore support this claim, but equilibrium dynamics does not reduce to equipartition of energy. In this work, a large set of direct numerical simulations is carried out to investigate if fluctuation-dissipation relations and the fluctuation theorem also apply at these scales. These two results link out-of-equilibrium properties of a forced system with its behavior at equilibrium. Both relations are verified quantitatively by the results of our simulations, further supporting that large-scale modes display equilibrium dynamics. They provide new tools to characterize both the mean value and the fluctuations of the injected energy by a large-scale force acting on turbulence driven by small scale random noise.