Helicity cascades in rotating turbulence

The effect of helicity (velocity-vorticity correlations) is studied in direct numerical simulations of rotating turbulence down to Rossby numbers of 0.02. The results suggest that the presence of net helicity plays an important role in the dynamics of the flow. In particular, at small Rossby number, the energy cascades to large scales, as expected, but helicity then can dominate the cascade to small scales. A phenomenological interpretation in terms of a direct cascade of helicity slowed down by wave-eddy interactions leads to the prediction of new inertial indices for the small-scale energy and helicity spectra.