On the dimension of the attractors in two-dimensional turbulence (Q1111215)

In conventional turbulence theory a heuristical estimate of the number of degrees of freedom of a turbulent flow is given by \(N\sim (l_ 0/l_ c)^ d\), where \(l_ 0\) denotes the linear size of the region occupied by the fluid and the length \(l_ c\) is a small scale determine by the physical properties of turbulence below which viscosity effects determine entirely the motion. In the three dimensional space the length \(l_ c\) is defined through dimensional analysis by the energy dissipation flux \(\epsilon\) as \(\nu^{3/4}/\epsilon^{1/4}\). In this paper the authors prove a rigorous estimate of the above relation for the two dimensional space by identifying the number of degrees of freedom with the dimension of the universal attractor of the d-dimensional Navier-Stokes equations. The estimate is optional up to a logarithmic correction. The relevance of this estimate to turbulence and related results are briefly discussed.