Scaling and universality in turbulent convection

Abstract

In two-dimensional turbulent convection, anomalous correlation functions of the temperature field were shown to be universal with respect to choice of external sources. These function were equal to the anomalous correlations of the concentration field of a passive tracer advected by the convective flow. It was found that the statistics of velocity differences was self-similar, universal, and close to Gaussian. The results showed that temperature intermittency in two-dimensional turbulent convection might be traced back to the existence of statistically preserved structures.