Symmetry Breaking in Stochastic Dynamics and Turbulence

Abstract

Symmetries play paramount roles in dynamics of physical systems. All theories of quantum physics and microworld including the fundamental Standard Model are constructed on the basis of symmetry principles. In classical physics, the importance and weight of these principles are the same as in quantum physics: dynamics of complex nonlinear statistical systems is straightforwardly dictated by their symmetry or its breaking, as we demonstrate on the example of developed (magneto)hydrodynamic turbulence and the related theoretical models. To simplify the problem, unbounded models are commonly used. However, turbulence is a mesoscopic phenomenon and the size of the system must be taken into account. It turns out that influence of outer length of turbulence is significant and can lead to intermittency. More precisely, we analyze the connection of phenomena such as behavior of statistical correlations of observable quantities, anomalous scaling, and generation of magnetic field by hydrodynamic fluctuations with symmetries such as Galilean symmetry, isotropy, spatial parity and their violation and finite size of the system.

Keywords

• stochastic dynamics
• symmetry breaking
• field-theoretic renormalization group