EXPONENTIAL DECAY OF THE POWER SPECTRUM OF TURBULENCE

The analyticity on a strip of the solutions of Navier-Stokes equations in 2D is shown to explain the observed fast decay of the frequency power spectrum of the turbulent velocity field. Some subtleties in the application of the Wiener-Khinchine method to turbulence are resolved by showing that the frequency power spectrum of turbulent velocities is in fact a measure exponentially decaying for frequency --> +/- infinity. Our approach also shows that the conventional procedures used in analyzing data in turbulence experiments are valid even in the absence of the ergodic property in the flow.