Paper detail

Intermittency measurement in two dimensional bacterial turbulence

In this paper, an experimental velocity database of a bacterial collective motion , e.g., \textit{B. subtilis}, in turbulent phase with volume filling fraction $84\%$ provided by Professor Goldstein at the Cambridge University UK, was analyzed to emphasize the scaling behavior of this active turbulence system. This was accomplished by performing a Hilbert-based methodology analysis to retrieve the scaling property without the $β-$limitation. A dual-power-law behavior separated by the viscosity scale $\ell_ν$ was observed for the $q$th-order Hilbert moment $\mathcal{L}_q(k)$. This dual-power-law belongs to an inverse-cascade since the scaling range is above the injection scale $R$, e.g., the bacterial body length. The measured scaling exponents $ζ(q)$ of both the small-scale \red{(resp. $k>k_ν$) and large-scale (resp. $k<k_ν$)} motions are convex, showing the multifractality. A lognormal formula was put forward to characterize the multifractal intensity. The measured intermittency parameters are $μ_S=0.26$ and $μ_L=0.17$ respectively for the small- and large-scale motions. It implies that the former cascade is more intermittent than the latter one, which is also confirmed by the corresponding singularity spectrum $f(α)$ vs $α$. Comparison with the conventional two-dimensional Ekman-Navier-Stokes equation, a continuum model indicates that the origin of the multifractality could be a result of some additional nonlinear interaction terms, which deservers a more careful investigation.