Structure functions and intermittency for coarsening systems

In studies of turbulence, there has been extensive use of physical quantities such as energy transfers and structure functions. We examine whether these quantities can be useful in understanding problems of domain growth or coarsening, as modelled by the time-dependent Ginzburg–Landau (TDGL) equation and the Cahn–Hilliard (CH) equation. This paper has two major themes. First, we review our recent papers on energy transfers in domain growth. Second, we study structure functions and intermittency for coarsening systems. As a consequence of sharp interfaces, the structure functions scale as Sq∼rζq, where r is the distance between two points. For the TDGL and CH models, ζq=1, indicating anomalous scaling. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Frontiers of turbulence and statistical physics’.