{"524191":{"#nid":"524191","#data":{"type":"event","title":"Statistical mechanics of the phrase transition to turbulence: Zonal flows, ecological collapse and extreme value statistics","body":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003EAbstract:\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EHow do fluids become turbulent as their flow velocity is increased? In recent years, careful experiments in pipes and Taylor-Couette systems have revealed that the lifetime of transient turbulent regions in a fluid appears to diverge with flow velocity just before the onset of turbulence, faster than any power law or exponential function. I show how this superexponential scaling of the turbulent lifetime in pipe flow is related to extreme value statistics, which I show is a manifestation of a mapping between transitional turbulence and the statistical mechanics model of directed percolation.\u0026nbsp; This mapping itself arises from a further surprising and remarkable connection: laminar and turbulent regions in a fluid behave as a predator-prey ecosystem. Such ecosystems are governed by individual fluctuations in the population and being naturally quantized, are solvable by path integral techniques from field theory. I explain the evidence for this mapping, and propose how a unified picture of the transition to turbulence emerges in systems ranging from turbulent convection to magnetohydrodynamics.\u003C\/p\u003E","summary":null,"format":"limited_html"}],"field_subtitle":"","field_summary":"","field_summary_sentence":[{"value":"School of Physics Colloquium"}],"uid":"28004","created_gmt":"2016-04-13 14:51:24","changed_gmt":"2017-04-13 21:16:00","author":"Dione Morton","boilerplate_text":"","field_publication":"","field_article_url":"","field_event_time":{"event_time_start":"2016-04-21T12:00:00-04:00","event_time_end":"2016-04-21T13:00:00-04:00","event_time_end_last":"2016-04-21T13:00:00-04:00","gmt_time_start":"2016-04-21 16:00:00","gmt_time_end":"2016-04-21 17:00:00","gmt_time_end_last":"2016-04-21 17:00:00","rrule":null,"timezone":"America\/New_York"},"extras":["free_food"],"hg_media":{"524171":{"id":"524171","type":"image","title":"Nigel Goldenfeld","body":null,"created":"1460732400","gmt_created":"2016-04-15 15:00:00","changed":"1475895293","gmt_changed":"2016-10-08 02:54:53","alt":"Nigel Goldenfeld","file":{"fid":"206091","name":"nigel_goldenfeld_2.jpg","image_path":"\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/nigel_goldenfeld_2_0.jpg","image_full_path":"http:\/\/www.tlwarc.hg.gatech.edu\/\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/nigel_goldenfeld_2_0.jpg","mime":"image\/jpeg","size":272466,"path_740":"http:\/\/www.tlwarc.hg.gatech.edu\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/740xx_scale\/public\/images\/nigel_goldenfeld_2_0.jpg?itok=aBXKc3G0"}}},"media_ids":["524171"],"groups":[{"id":"126011","name":"School of Physics"}],"categories":[],"keywords":[{"id":"166937","name":"School of Physics"}],"core_research_areas":[],"news_room_topics":[],"event_categories":[{"id":"1795","name":"Seminar\/Lecture\/Colloquium"}],"invited_audience":[{"id":"78751","name":"Undergraduate students"},{"id":"78761","name":"Faculty\/Staff"},{"id":"78771","name":"Public"},{"id":"174045","name":"Graduate students"}],"affiliations":[],"classification":[],"areas_of_expertise":[],"news_and_recent_appearances":[],"phone":[],"contact":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003EDione Morton\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u003Ca href=\u0022mailto:dione.morton@physics.gatech.edu\u0022\u003Edione.morton@physics.gatech.edu\u003C\/a\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E","format":"limited_html"}],"email":[],"slides":[],"orientation":[],"userdata":""}}}