Issue |
EPL
Volume 113, Number 4, February 2016
|
|
---|---|---|
Article Number | 44001 | |
Number of page(s) | 6 | |
Section | Electromagnetism, Optics, Acoustics, Heat Transfer, Classical Mechanics, and Fluid Dynamics | |
DOI | https://doi.org/10.1209/0295-5075/113/44001 | |
Published online | 04 March 2016 |
Energy cascade in internal-wave attractors
1 Univ Lyon, ENS de Lyon, Univ Claude Bernard, CNRS, Laboratoire de Physique - F-69342 Lyon, France
2 Lavrentyev Institute of Hydrodynamics - Novosibirsk, Russia
3 Institute of Mechanics and Department of Mechanics and Mathematics, Moscow State University and Shirshov Institute of Oceanology - Moscow, Russia
Received: 25 November 2015
Accepted: 19 February 2016
One of the pivotal questions in the dynamics of the oceans is related to the cascade of mechanical energy in the abyss and its contribution to mixing. Here, we propose internal-wave attractors in the large-amplitude regime as a unique self-consistent experimental and numerical setup that models a cascade of triadic interactions transferring energy from large-scale monochromatic input to multi-scale internal-wave motion. We also provide signatures of a discrete wave turbulence framework for internal waves. Finally, we show how, beyond this regime, we have a clear transition to a regime of small-scale high-vorticity events which induce mixing.
PACS: 47.35.Bb – Gravity waves / 47.55.Hd – Stratified flows / 92.05.Bc – Analytical modeling and laboratory experiments
© EPLA, 2016
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