Experimental lagrangian acceleration probability density function measurement

We report experimental results on the acceleration component probability distribution function at R-lambda = 690 to probabilities of less than 10(-7). This is an improvement of more than an order of magnitude over past measurements and allows us to conclude that the fourth moment converges and the flatness is approximately 55. We compare our probability distribution to those predicted by several models inspired by non-extensive statistical mechanics. We also look at acceleration component probability distributions conditioned on a velocity component for conditioning velocities as high as three times the standard deviation and find them to be highly non-Gaussian. (C) 2004 Published by Elsevier B.V.