Time dynamic of Fourier modes in turbulence: Sweeping effect, long-time correlations and time intermittency

We report an experimental investigation of the statistical time dynamic of spatial Fourier modes in a fully developped turbulent jet flow. Measurements rely on an original acoustic scattering technique, allowing the direct and continuous probing in a time of spatial Fourier modes of the turbulent vorticity field at well defined spatial wavevectors. From the recordings of the amplitude of the spatial Fourier modes corresponding to different wavevectors in the inertial range, we compute the time correlation functions of the modal amplitude. The modal vorticity dynamics exhibits two well separated time scales: a short one which is scale dependant and related to the well known sweeping effect (random advection), and a much longer one, of order the integral time scale, which is not scale dependent. By computing the cross-correlation of the amplitude of two different wavevectors, we evidence a clear statistical dependance between scales, whatever their separation, at variance with the original Kolmogorov 41 theory. We ascribe our experimental results to a manifestation of a new type of statistical intermittency. We call this new statistical feature a large scale time intermittency effect, in contrast with the usual small scale spatial intermittency reported in Eulerian velocity measurements. We propose to attribute this time intermittency, to the fluctuations in time of the injected energy at large scale, in the spirit of the objection formulated by Landau against the K41 theory.