English

Energy spectrum of two-dimensional isotropic rapidly rotating turbulence

Fluid Dynamics 2024-08-28 v1

Abstract

We study a two-dimensional isotropic rotating system and obtain both theoretically and numerically a K2K^{-2} energy spectrum under the rapidly rotating condition (Ro1Ro\ll 1), which was initially obtained by Zeman (1994) and Zhou (1995). In rotating turbulence, the K2K^{-2} energy spectrum was proposed under the assumption of isotropy, however, the direction selectivity of rotation breaks isotropy, making this K2K^{-2} spectrum not easily observable. To fill the gap between theoretical assumptions and realizability, we study the turbulence of inertial waves in an artificial two-dimensional isotropic rotating turbulence system. In the limit of a small Rossby number, we asymptotically derive a nonlinear amplitude equation for inertial waves, which gives the K2K^{-2} spectrum using a strong turbulence argument. This scaling is justified by numerical simulations of both the amplitude equation and the original system.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2408.15106,
  title  = {Energy spectrum of two-dimensional isotropic rapidly rotating turbulence},
  author = {Peiyang Li and Jin-Han Xie},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2408.15106},
  year   = {2024}
}