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Subcritical turbulent condensate in rapidly rotating Rayleigh–Bénard convection

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 February 2019

Benjamin Favier Open the ORCID record for Benjamin Favier [Opens in a new window] ,
Céline Guervilly Open the ORCID record for Céline Guervilly [Opens in a new window]  and
Edgar Knobloch
Benjamin Favier*
Affiliation:
Aix Marseille Univ, CNRS, Centrale Marseille, IRPHE, Marseille, France
Céline Guervilly
Affiliation:
School of Mathematics, Statistics and Physics, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne NE1 7RU, UK
Edgar Knobloch
Affiliation:
Department of Physics, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA
*
†Email address for correspondence: [email protected]
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Abstract

The possibility of subcritical behaviour in the geostrophic turbulence regime of rapidly rotating thermally driven convection is explored. In this regime a non-local inverse energy transfer may compete with the more traditional and local direct cascade. We show that, even for control parameters for which no inverse cascade has previously been observed, a subcritical transition towards a large-scale vortex state can occur when the system is initialized with a vortex dipole of finite amplitude. This new example of bistability in a turbulent flow, which may not be specific to rotating convection, opens up new avenues for studying energy transfer in strongly anisotropic three-dimensional flows such as atmospheric or oceanic circulations.

JFM classification

Geophysical and Geological Flows: Geostrophic turbulence Turbulent Flows: Turbulent transition
Type
JFM Rapids
Information
Journal of Fluid Mechanics , Volume 864 , 10 April 2019 , R1
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Copyright
© 2019 Cambridge University Press 

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