Turbulence is a well-known physical phenomenon observable in everyday life. The seemingly chaotic behavior of smoke trails from a cigarette or milk as it is poured into coffee is easily seen; indeed, turbulent flow was famously sketched by Leonardo da Vinci over half a millennium ago. Despite its conspicuousness, turbulence remains one of greatest enigmas of both theoretical and mathematical physics. Any small progress made in developing better mathematical underpinnings to the theory could lead to profound developments in the applied sciences. Characteristic to turbulence is a cascade to small scales: in hydrodynamic turbulence this corresponds to the formations of eddies that break up to form smaller eddies, whereupon the process repeats. The aim of this research project is to investigate the mathematical structures present in such a cascade.
The project is guided by two underlying goals: to better understand anomalous dissipation of kinetic energy in turbulence, and to develop stronger mathematical foundations for the theory of wave turbulence. Specifically, relating to the first goal, the investigator intends to work towards resolving a famous conjecture of Lars Onsager relating to the existence of weak solutions to the Euler equations whose kinetic energy is not conserved. The work will build on previously-developed convex integration schemes and will introduce new ideas unseen in any convex integration to date. With regard to the second goal, the investigator intends to develop new mathematical methods in order to better understand how heuristic derivations made in the physics literature can be made rigorous. A key aspect of this investigation will be the use of methods from analytic number theory in order to characterize resonant and quasi-resonant interactions, which are suspected to play a fundamental role in the non-linear dynamics of the regimes of wave turbulence under investigation.
