Observations of extreme events in turbulence

Gregory Bewley, Associate Professor , Cornell University

Hopeman 224

The salient feature of turbulence is that it spontaneously concentrates energy onto small transient structures.  I will introduce some of my past and future work on the rare and powerful dynamics that are a consequence of this process, including the reconnection of quantized vortices in superfluid helium, the collisions of cloud droplets in atmospheric turbulence, and the formation of small shocklets in compressible flows.