Spectral Transfers of Sign-Definite Invariants in Wave Turbulence

Abstract: We consider the spectral transfers of sign-definite invariants in general wave turbulence systems equipped with a wave kinetic equation. We develop a formalism to investigate and to characterize these transfers, based on the ability to track the exchanges within individual interactions by the detailed-conservation properties of the resonant interactions. We consider the three-wave, four-wave, five-wave and six-wave kinetic equations, introducing measures of locality of general wave turbulence system and of median step size in wave-wave scattering. We then use the proposed method to study the Majda-McLaughlin-Tabak one-dimensional model and examine the characteristics of energy and action transport. We show that energy in the direct energy cascade is dominated by local interactions, but shows a nonlocal inverse "return flow" that counters the direction of the cascade. The inverse action cascade is instead ruled by more nonlocal interactions, but shows a highly local direct "return flow". We also show that for both cascades a scale separation of over an order of magnitude is necessary to ensure a negligible interaction rate with forcing or dissipation regions, hinting at why in numerical simulations of the model an extremely large box size is necessary in order to realize the theoretical Kolmogorov-Zakharov spectra.