Transport of a Passive Tracer by an Irregular Velocity Field

The trajectories of a passive tracer in a turbulent flow satisfy the ordinary differential equation x′(t)=V(t,x(t)), where V(t,x) is a stationary random field, the so-called Eulerian velocity. It is a nontrivial question to define the dynamics of the tracer in the case when the realizations of the Eulerian field are only spatially Hölder regular because the ordinary differential equation in question lacks then uniqueness. The most obvious approach is to regularize the dynamics, either by smoothing the velocity field (the so-called ε-regularization), or by adding a small molecular diffusivity (the so-called κ-regularization) and then pass to the appropriate limit with the respective regularization parameter. The first procedure corresponds to the Prandtl number Pr=∞, while the second to Pr=0. In the present paper we consider a two parameter family of Gaussian, Markovian time correlated fields V(t,x), with the power-law spectrum. Using the infinite dimensional stochastic calculus we show the existence and uniqueness of the law of the trajectory process corresponding to a given field V(t,x) for a certain regime of parameters characterizing the spectrum of the field. Additionally, this law is the limit, in the sense of the weak convergence of measures, of the laws obtained as a result of any of the described regularizations. The so-called Kolmogorov point, that corresponds to the parameters characterizing the relaxation time and energy spectrum of a turbulent, three dimensional flow, belongs to the boundary of the parameter regime considered in the paper.