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Lookup NU author(s): Dr Benjamin Favier, Dr Celine Guervilly
This is the authors' accepted manuscript of an article that has been published in its final definitive form by Cambridge University Press, 2019.
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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.
Author(s): Favier B, Guervilly C, Knobloch E
Publication type: Article
Publication status: Published
Journal: Journal of Fluid Mechanics
Year: 2019
Volume: 864
Print publication date: 10/04/2019
Online publication date: 07/02/2019
Acceptance date: 08/01/2019
Date deposited: 06/02/2019
ISSN (print): 0022-1120
ISSN (electronic): 1469-7645
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
URL: https://doi.org/10.1017/jfm.2019.58
DOI: 10.1017/jfm.2019.58
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