Seminar "How Universal is Turbulence?" by Prof. Samriddhi Sankar Ray

[Speaker]

Prof. Samriddhi Sankar Ray
Associate Professor
International Center for Theoretical Sciences (ICTS-TIFR)
Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Bangalore, India

[Abstract]

Turbulence and signatures of turbulence --- intermittency, scaling and multifractality --- are associated with flows at very high Reynolds number. However, there is recent evidence of some of these aspects of turbulence showing up in low Reynolds number flows. In this talk, by focussing on one such flow --- namely dense bacterial suspensions --- we try to ask just how universal are the fundamental principles of inertial turbulence? In particular, we discuss issues of universality and intermittency in such living fluids. If time permits, we will end with one example from high Reynolds number inertial turbulence which suggests that ideas stemming from the Frisch-Parisi multifractal formalism can be adapted more "locally" leading to a possible route in understanding questions of anomalous dissipation and singularities.