Anomalous transport regimes in a stochastic advection-diffusion model

Abstract

A general solution to the stochastic advection-diffusion problem is obtained for a fractal medium with long-range correlated spatial fluctuations. A particular transport regime is determined by two basic parameters: the exponent 2h of power-law decay of the two-point velocity correlation function and the mean advection velocity u. The values of these parameters corresponding to anomalous diffusion are determined, and anomalous behavior of the tracer distribution is analyzed for various combinations of u and h. The tracer concentration is shown to decrease exponentially at large distances, whereas power-law decay is predicted by fractional differential equations. Equations that describe the essential characteristics of the solution are written in terms of coupled space-time fractional differential operators. The analysis relies on a diagrammatic technique and makes use of scale-invariant properties of the medium.