Statistics of Extreme Turbulent Circulation Events from Multifractality Breaking

Abstract: Recent numerical explorations of extremely intense circulation fluctuations at high Reynolds number flows have brought to light novel aspects of turbulent intermittency. Vortex gas modeling ideas, introduced alongside such developments, have led to accurate descriptions of the core and the intermediate tails of circulation probability distribution functions (cPDFs), as well as the scaling exponents associated to statistical moments of circulation. We extend the predictive reach of the vortex gas picture of turbulence, by emphasizing that multifractality breaking, one of its salient phenomenological ingredients, is the key concept to disclose the asymptotic form of cPDF tails. A remarkable analytical agreement is found with previous results derived within the framework of the instanton approach to circulation intermittency.