Alexandre J. Chorin - Böcker

This book provides an introduction to turbulence in vortex systems, and to turbulence theory for incompressible flow described in terms of the vorticity field. It is the author's hope that by the end of the book the reader will believe that these subjects are identical, and constitute a special case of fairly standard statistical mechanics, with both equilibrium and non-equilibrium aspects. The author's main goal is to relate turbulence to statistical mechanics. The book is organized as follows: the first three chapters constitute a fairly standard introduction to homogeneous turbulence in incompressible flow; a quick review of fluid mechanics; a summary of the appropriate Fourier theory; a summary of Kolmogorov's theory of the inertial range. The next four chapters present the statistical theory of vortex notion, and the vortex dynamics of turbulence. The book ends with the major conclusion that turbulence can no longer be viewed as incomprehensible. This book will be appropriate for professionals in the fields of applied mathematics, mechanical engineering, or physics, as well as graduate students in these noted areas.

Mathematics is playing an ever more important role in the physical and biological sciences, provoking a blurring of boundaries between scientific disciplines and a resurgence of interest in the modern as weil as the clas­ sical techniques of applied mathematics. This renewal of interest, bothin research and teaching, has led to the establishment of the series: Texts in Applied Mathematics (TAM). The development of new courses is a natural consequence of a high Ievel of excitement on the research frontier as newer techniques, such as numerical and symbolic computer systems, dynamical systems, and chaos, mix with and reinforce the traditional methods of applied mathematics. Thus, the purpose of this textbook series is to meet the current and future needs of these advances and encourage the teaching of new courses. TAM will publish textbooks suitable for use in advanced undergraduate and beginning graduate courses, and will complement the Applied Mathematical Seiences (AMS) series, whichwill focus on advanced textbooks and research Ievel monographs. Preface This book is based on a one-term coursein fluid mechanics originally taught in the Department of Mathematics of the U niversity of California, Berkeley, during the spring of 1978. The goal of the course was not to provide an exhaustive account of fluid mechanics, nor to assess the engineering value of various approximation procedures.

This book provides an introduction to the theory of turbulence in fluids based on the representation of the flow by means of its vorticity field. It has long been understood that, at least in the case of incompressible flow, the vorticity representation is natural and physically transparent, yet the development of a theory of turbulence in this representation has been slow. The pioneering work of Onsager and of Joyce and Montgomery on the statistical mechanics of two-dimensional vortex systems has only recently been put on a firm mathematical footing, and the three-dimensional theory remains in parts speculative and even controversial. The first three chapters of the book contain a reasonably standard intro­ duction to homogeneous turbulence (the simplest case); a quick review of fluid mechanics is followed by a summary of the appropriate Fourier theory (more detailed than is customary in fluid mechanics) and by a summary of Kolmogorov's theory of the inertial range, slanted so as to dovetail with later vortex-based arguments. The possibility that the inertial spectrum is an equilibrium spectrum is raised.

Mathematics is playing an ever more important role in the physical and biological sciences, provoking a blurring of boundaries between scientific disciplines and a resurgence of interest in the modern as weil as the clas­ sical techniques of applied mathematics. This renewal of interest, bothin research and teaching, has led to the establishment of the series: Texts in Applied Mathematics (TAM). The development of new courses is a natural consequence of a high Ievel of excitement on the research frontier as newer techniques, such as numerical and symbolic computer systems, dynamical systems, and chaos, mix with and reinforce the traditional methods of applied mathematics. Thus, the purpose of this textbook series is to meet the current and future needs of these advances and encourage the teaching of new courses. TAM will publish textbooks suitable for use in advanced undergraduate and beginning graduate courses, and will complement the Applied Mathematical Seiences (AMS) series, whichwill focus on advanced textbooks and research Ievel monographs. Preface This book is based on a one-term coursein fluid mechanics originally taught in the Department of Mathematics of the U niversity of California, Berkeley, during the spring of 1978. The goal of the course was not to provide an exhaustive account of fluid mechanics, nor to assess the engineering value of various approximation procedures.

The 60th birthday of Peter Lax was celebrated at Berkeley by a conference entitled Wave Motion: theory, application and computation held at the mathematical Sciences Research Institute, June 9-12, 1986. Peter Lax has made profound and essential contributions to the topics described by the title of the conference, and has also contributed in important ways to many other mathematical subjects, and as a result this conference volume dedicated to him includes research work on a variety of topics, not all clearly related to its title.

"Stochastic Tools in Mathematics and Science" covers basic stochastic tools used in physics, chemistry, engineering and the life sciences. The topics covered include conditional expectations, stochastic processes, Brownian motion and its relation to partial differential equations, Langevin equations, the Liouville and Fokker-Planck equations, as well as Markov chain Monte Carlo algorithms, renormalization, basic statistical mechanics, and generalized Langevin equations and the Mori-Zwanzig formalism. The applications include sampling algorithms, data assimilation, prediction from partial data, spectral analysis, and turbulence.The book is based on lecture notes from a class that has attracted graduate and advanced undergraduate students from mathematics and from many other science departments at the University of California, Berkeley. Each chapter is followed by exercises. The book will be useful for scientists and engineers working in a wide range of fields and applications.For this new edition the material has been thoroughly reorganized and updated, and new sections on scaling, sampling, filtering and data assimilation, based on recent research, have been added. There are additional figures and exercises.Review of earlier edition:"This is an excellent concise textbook which can be used for self-study by graduate and advanced undergraduate students and as a recommended textbook for an introductory course on probabilistic tools in science."Mathematical Reviews, 2006