The dispersion and deformation of molecular patterns written in turbulent air*

Molecular tagging is used to study the dispersion and deformation of patterns written in turbulent air. The writing is done by fusing O₂ and N₂ molecules into NO in the focus of a strong ultraviolet laser beam. By crossing several of these laser beams, patterns that have both small and large scales can be painted. The patterns are visualized a while later by inducing  fluorescence of the NO molecules with a second UV laser and registering the image. 

The width of the lines that make the pattern is approximately 50 μm, a few times the Kolmogorov length η, the smallest length scale in turbulence, while the largest size of the patterns

(≅ 4 mm) is inside the inertial range of the used turbulent jet flow.  At small scales molecular clouds disperse under the joint action of molecular diffusion and turbulence.  The experiments reveal this highly nontrivial interaction.  

At inertial-range scales (≅ 200 η) we verify the Batchelor dispersion of objects whose size is inside the inertial range.

Patterns are compressible objects and spontaneously develop concentration fluctuations.  We show for the first time the non-trivial statistical properties of these fluctuations.

Finally, we use the information in written and deformed lines to quantify turbulent intermittency, obtaining results that agree with the established scaling anomaly of velocity structure functions.