Observation of intermittency in wave turbulence

Éric Falcon (1, 2) , Stéphan Fauve (1) , Claude Laroche (3)

1 LPS - Laboratoire de Physique Statistique de l'ENS
2 MSC - Matière et Systèmes Complexes
3 Phys-ENS - Laboratoire de Physique de l'ENS Lyon

We report the observation of intermittency in gravity-capillary wave turbulence on the surface of mercury. We measure the temporal fluctuations of surface wave amplitude at a given location. We show that the shape of the probability density function of the local slope increments of the surface waves strongly changes across the time scales. The related structure functions and the flatness are found to be power laws of the time scale on more than one decade. The exponents of these power laws increase nonlinearly with the order of the structure function. All these observations show the intermittent nature of the increments of the local slope in wave turbulence. We discuss the possible origin of this intermittency.

Mots clés: intermittency; wave turbulence; surface wave; gravity wave; capillary wave; Kolmogorov; spectrum; experiment; probability density function; fluctuation; Non Gaussian statistics; weak turbulence; structure function; flatness; increment

Domaines: Dynamique des Fluides [physics.flu-dyn]; Dynamique Chaotique [nlin.CD]; Autre [cond-mat.other]; Mécanique des fluides [physics.class-ph]; Mécanique des fluides [physics.class-ph]

Éric Falcon, Stéphan Fauve, Claude Laroche. Observation of intermittency in wave turbulence. Physical Review Letters, 2007, 98 (15), pp.154501. ⟨10.1103/PhysRevLett.98.154501⟩. ⟨hal-00122333v2⟩