Stochastic resonance of rotating particles in turbulence

The chaotic dynamics of small-scale vorticity plays a key role in understanding and controlling turbulence, with direct implications for energy transfer, mixing, and coherent structure evolution. However, measuring or controlling its dynamics remains a major conceptual and experimental challenge due to its transient and chaotic nature. Here we use a combination of experiments, theory, and simulations to show that small magnetic particles of different densities, exploring flow regions of distinct vorticity statistics, can act as effective probes for measuring and forcing turbulence at its smallest scale. The interplay between the magnetic torque, from an externally controllable magnetic field, and hydrodynamic stresses, from small-scale turbulent vorticity, uncovers an extremely rich phenomenology. Notably, we present the first experimental and numerical observation of stochastic resonance for particles in turbulence, where turbulent fluctuations, remarkably acting as an effective noise, enhance the particle rotational response to external forcing. We identify a pronounced resonant peak in the particle rotational phase lag when the applied rotating magnetic field matches the characteristic intensity of small-scale turbulent vortices. Furthermore, we reveal a novel symmetry-breaking mechanism: an oscillating magnetic field with zero mean angular velocity can counterintuitively induce net particle rotation in zero-mean vorticity turbulence. Our findings pave the way to developing flexible techniques for manipulating particle dynamics in complex flows. The discovered mechanism enables a novel magnetic resonance-based approach to be developed for measuring turbulent vorticity. In this approach, particles act as probes, emitting a detectable magnetic field that can characterize turbulence even under conditions that are optically inaccessible.