Turbulence in strongly coupled dusty plasmas using generalized hydrodynamic description

Abstract

The properties of decaying turbulence have been studied with the help of a Generalized Hydrodynamic (GHD) fluid model in the context of strongly coupled dusty plasma medium in two dimensions. The GHD model treats the strongly coupled dusty plasma system as a visco-elastic medium. The incompressible limit of the GHD model is considered here. The studies carried out here are, however, applicable to a wider class of visco-elastic systems, and are not merely confined to the dusty plasma medium. Our simulations studies show that an initial spectrum that is confined in a limited domain of wave numbers becomes broad, even when the Reynold's number is much less than the critical value required for the onset of turbulence in Newtonian fluids. This is a signature of elastic turbulence, where Weissenberg's number also plays an important role on the onset of turbulence. This feature has been observed in several experiments. It is also shown that the existence of memory relaxation time parameter and the transverse shear wave inhibit the normal process (for 2-D systems) of inverse spectral cascade in this case. A detailed simulation study has been carried out for the understanding of this inhibition.