Structures and Dynamics of Lone Schur Flows with Vorticity but no Swirls

We study the dynamics and indications of the flows with all the eigenvalues of the velocity gradients being real, thus lone', \textit{i.e.}, without forming the complex conjugate pairs associated to the swirls. A generic prototype is the lone Schur flow (LSF)’ whose velocity gradient tensor is uniformly of Schur form but free of complex eigenvalues. A (partial) integral-differential equation governing such LSF is established, and a semi-analytical algorithm is accordingly designed for computation. Simulated evolutions of example LSFs in 2- and 3-spaces show rich dynamics and vortical structures, but no obvious swirls (nor even the homoclinic loops in whatever distorted forms) could be found. We discovered the flux loop scenario and the anisotropic analogy of the incompressible turbulence at or close to the critical dimension $D_c=4\mathrm{/}3$ decimated from 2-space.