Rayleigh-Taylor turbulence with singular nonuniform initial conditions

We perform direct numerical simulations of three-dimensional Rayleigh-Taylor turbulence with a nonuniform singular initial temperature background. In such conditions, the mixing layer evolves under the driving of a varying effective At wood number; the long-time growth is still self-similar, but no longer proportional to t(2) and depends on the singularity exponent c of the initial profile Delta T proportional to z(c). We show that universality is recovered when looking at the efficiency, defined as the ratio of the variation rates of the kinetic energy over the heat flux. A closure model is proposed that is able to reproduce analytically the time evolution of the mean temperature profiles, in excellent agreement with the numerical results. Finally, we reinterpret our findings in the light of spontaneous stochasticity where the growth of the mixing layer is mapped into the propagation of a wave of turbulent fluctuations on a rough background.