Spectral origin of conformal invariance in active nematic turbulence

Zero-vorticity contours in the collective flows of living cells obey Schramm-Loewner evolution with diffusivity $\kappa =6$ and thus fall in the universality class of critical percolation. This observation is surprising because the underlying vorticity field has long-range correlations that, according to the Weinrib-Halperin criterion, should alter the universality class. Here we propose a spectral explanation for this apparent paradox in two-dimensional active nematic turbulence. The universal energy spectrum $E(q)\sim q^{-1}$ implies sign-field correlations whose decay exponent $a=3\mathrm{/}2$ matches the Weinrib-Halperin marginal threshold $2\mathrm{/}{\nu }_0=3\mathrm{/}2$ for two-dimensional percolation. At this marginal point the long-range correlations are irrelevant under renormalization, so the system flows to the uncorrelated percolation fixed point. Gaussian surrogate fields with the same spectrum confirm $a=3\mathrm{/}2$ to three significant figures, and left-passage analysis of their zero-vorticity interfaces yields $\kappa =5.98\pm 0.08$, consistent with SLE_6.