Pattern formation by turbulent cascades

Abstract Fully developed turbulence is a universal and scale-invariant chaotic state characterized by an energy cascade from large to small scales at which the cascade is eventually arrested by dissipation 1–6 . Here we show how to harness these seemingly structureless turbulent cascades to generate patterns. Pattern formation entails a process of wavelength selection, which can usually be traced to the linear instability of a homogeneous state 7 . By contrast, the mechanism we propose here is fully nonlinear. It is triggered by the non-dissipative arrest of turbulent cascades: energy piles up at an intermediate scale, which is neither the system size nor the smallest scales at which energy is usually dissipated. Using a combination of theory and large-scale simulations, we show that the tunable wavelength of these cascade-induced patterns can be set by a non-dissipative transport coefficient called odd viscosity, ubiquitous in chiral fluids ranging from bioactive to quantum systems 8–12 . Odd viscosity, which acts as a scale-dependent Coriolis-like force, leads to a two-dimensionalization of the flow at small scales, in contrast with rotating fluids in which a two-dimensionalization occurs at large scales 4 . Apart from odd viscosity fluids, we discuss how cascade-induced patterns can arise in natural systems, including atmospheric flows 13–19 , stellar plasma such as the solar wind 20–22 , or the pulverization and coagulation of objects or droplets in which mass rather than energy cascades 23–25 .