Effects of turbulent mixing on critical behaviour: renormalization-group analysis of the Potts model

Abstract

The critical behaviour of a system, subjected to strongly anisotropic turbulent mixing, is studied by means of the field-theoretic renormalization group. Specifically, the relaxational stochastic dynamics of a non-conserved multicomponent order parameter of the Ashkin–Teller–Potts model, coupled to a random velocity field with prescribed statistics, is considered. The velocity is taken to be Gaussian, white in time, with a correlation function of the form ∝δ(t − t′)/|k⊥|d − 1 + ξ, where k⊥ is the component of the wave vector, perpendicular to the distinguished direction (‘direction of the flow’)—the d-dimensional generalization of the ensemble was introduced by Avellaneda and Majda (1990 Commun. Math. Phys. 131 381) within the context of passive scalar advection. This model can describe a rich class of physical situations. It is shown that, depending on the values of the parameters that define the self-interaction of the order parameter and the relation between the exponent ξ and the space dimension d, the system exhibits various types of large-scale scaling behaviour, associated with different infrared attractive fixed points of the renormalization-group equations. In addition to known asymptotic regimes (critical dynamics of the Potts model and passively advected field without self-interaction), the existence of a new, non-equilibrium and strongly anisotropic, type of critical behaviour (universality class) is established, and the corresponding critical dimensions are calculated to the leading order of the double expansion in ξ and ε = 6 − d (one-loop approximation). The scaling appears to be strongly anisotropic in the sense that the critical dimensions related to the directions parallel and perpendicular to the flow are essentially different.