The well-known translation between the power law of the energy spectrum and that of the correlation function or the second order structure function has been widely used in analyzing random data. Here, we show that the translation is valid only in proper scaling regimes. The regimes of valid translation are different for the correlation function and the structure function. Indeed, they do not overlap. Furthermore, in practice, the power laws exist only for a finite range of scales. We show that this finite range makes the translation inexact even in the proper scaling regime. The error depends on the scaling exponent. The current findings are applicable to data analysis in fluid turbulence and other stochastic systems.

• Received 22 December 1997

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevE.58.5841