8th Liquid Matter Conference September 6-10, 2011 Wien, Austria ...

Fri 911:10-14:00P3.29Anisotropy of spatiotemporal decorrelation inelectrohydrodynamic turbulenceLuca Sorriso-Valvo, 1 Francesco Carbone, 1 and Giuseppe Strangi 21 IPCF-CNR, ponte P. Bucci, cubo 31C, 87036, rende (CS), Italy2 Dipartimento di Fisica - Università della Calabria, rende (CS), ItalyNonlinear straining and random sweeping spatiotemporal decorrelation properties, originally introducedas the main processes for turbulent fluctuations decorrelation in usual fluid flows, havebeen observed experimentally in anisotropic electroconvective turbulence generated in a nematicliquid crystal under the action of an external oscillating electric field. A transition between bothprocesses occurs when the instability is driven toward states of increasing complexity, thus showingthat decorrelation mechanisms in turbulent media are more universal than naively expected. Amodel for both decorrelation mechanisms is introduced, its comparison with experimental resultsproviding an estimate of the characteristic sweeping velocity29