期刊名称：Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
印刷版ISSN：0027-8424
电子版ISSN：1091-6490
出版年度：2017
卷号：114
期号：9
页码：2119-2124
DOI：10.1073/pnas.1614721114
语种：English
出版社：The National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
摘要：Classical turbulence theory assumes that energy transport in a 3D turbulent flow proceeds through a Richardson cascade whereby larger vortices successively decay into smaller ones. By contrast, an additional inverse cascade characterized by vortex growth exists in 2D fluids and gases, with profound implications for meteorological flows and fluid mixing. The possibility of a helicity-driven inverse cascade in 3D fluids had been rejected in the 1970s based on equilibrium-thermodynamic arguments. Recently, however, it was proposed that certain symmetry-breaking processes could potentially trigger a 3D inverse cascade, but no physical system exhibiting this phenomenon has been identified to date. Here, we present analytical and numerical evidence for the existence of an inverse energy cascade in an experimentally validated 3D active fluid model, describing microbial suspension flows that spontaneously break mirror symmetry. We show analytically that self-organized scale selection, a generic feature of many biological and engineered nonequilibrium fluids, can generate parity-violating Beltrami flows. Our simulations further demonstrate how active scale selection controls mirror-symmetry breaking and the emergence of a 3D inverse cascade.
