A phenomenological turbulence model in which the energy spectrum obeys a nonlinear diffusion equation is analyzed. The general steady state contains a nonlinear mixture of the constant-flux Kolmogorov and fluxless thermodynamic components. Such “warm cascade” solutions describe a bottleneck phenomenon of spectrum stagnation near the dissipative scale. Transient self-similar solutions describing a finite-time formation of steady cascades are analyzed and found to exhibit nontrivial scaling behavior.

• Received 23 April 2003

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.92.044501