Renormalization group in the problem of active scalar advection

The field theoretic renormalization group (RG) is applied to the model of a near-equilibrium fluid coupled to a scalar field (like temperature or density of an impurity) which is active, that is, influencing the dynamics of the fluid itself. It is shown that the only possible nontrivial infrared asymptotic regimes are governed by “passive” fixed points of the RG equations, where the back reaction is irrelevant. This result reminds of that obtained in [Nandy and Bhattacharjee, J. Phys. A: Math. Gen. 31, 2621 (1998)] in a model describing active convection by fully developed turbulence. Furthermore, we establish the existence of “exotic” fixed points with negative and complex effective couplings and transport coefficients that may suggest possible directions for future studies.