Transition of the scaling law in inverse energy cascade range caused by a nonlocal excitation of coherent structures observed in two-dimensional turbulent fields

Abstract

We numerically investigate the inverse energy cascade range of two-dimensional Navier-Stokes turbulence. Our focus is on the universality of the Kolmogorov's phenomenology. In our direct numerical simulations, two types of forcing processes, the random forcing and the deterministic forcing, are employed besides the systematically varied numerical parameters. We first calculate the two-dimensional Navier-Stokes equations and confirm that results in the quasi steady state are consistent with the classical phenomenology for both types of forcing processes. It is also found that the difference in forcing process appears after the inverse energy cascade range reaches the system size; the dipole coherent vortices emerge and grow only when the random forcing is adopted. Then we add a large-scale drag term to the Navier-Stokes equations to obtain the statistically stationary state. When the random forcing is used, the scaling exponent of the energy spectrum in the stationary state starts to differ from the predicted -5/3 in the inverse energy cascade range as the infrared Reynolds number Re(d) increases, where Re(d) is defined as k(f)/k(d) with the forcing wave number k(f) and the large-scale drag wave number k(d). That can be interpreted as a transition phenomenon in which the local maximum vorticity grows like an order parameter caused by excitation of strong coherent vortices. Strong coherent vortices emerge and grow after the quasi steady state and destroy the scaling law when Re(d) is over a critical value. These coherent vortices are not due to the finite-size effect, unlike the dipole coherent vortices. On the other hand, when the deterministic forcing is adopted, strong coherent vortices are hardly seen and the -5/3 scaling law holds independently of Re(d). We examine the cases of the combination of both types of forcing processes and find that formation of such coherent vortices is sensitive to the mechanism of the external forcing process as well as the numerical parameters. Several types of large-scale drag terms are also tested and their insignificant influence on these qualitative properties is revealed.