Collaborative Research: Self-organization and transitions in anisotropic turbulence

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The impact of rotation and thermal driving on stellar and planetary bodies is clearly visible in far-field optical observations. Such observations reveal the presence of differentially rotating fluid atmospheres with embedded features in the form of large-scale eddies and jets that greatly influence the climate on the celestial body. On Earth the impact of the high latitude jet stream on weather and the destructive impact of hurricanes due to climate change is evident. Within the Jovian atmosphere, the recent discovery by the Juno mission of polar vortices illuminates the longevity of vortical structures. Theory, experimentation, and numerical simulations strongly suggest that the generation of large-scale jets and vortices is common in fluid turbulence within thin layers like the Earth’s atmosphere and on rapidly rotating celestial bodies such as Jupiter. Focusing on these paradigms, this project is dedicated to elucidating the basic mechanism behind the formation of such large-scale structures from small-scale turbulent fluctuations and its disruption via the generation of isolated, weakly-interacting, mesoscale shielded vortices, and to extending this understanding to more realistic models that introduce higher level physics such as the effects of water vapor and internal heating via latent heat release. This understanding will inform more detailed studies such as those based on realistic Global Ocean and Atmospheric Circulation Models and offers hope for understanding the conditions favoring the formation of both large-scale structures and of the smaller-scale shielded vortices. The modeling strategy taken provides a foundation upon which greater discipline-specific complexity can be built. The project will support and train one graduate student and one postdoctoral researcher in the physical understanding of energy transfer between scales in systems of geophysical relevance, asymptotic and other modeling techniques, as well as direct numerical simulations of rapidly rotating fluid layers, appropriate for planetary-scale phenomena on and within the Earth.The aim of this project is to classify different regimes of instability-driven turbulence in two dimensions (2D) as a function of the energy input and dissipation parameters, and to explore how these states evolve when three-dimensional (3D) fluctuations become increasingly important as the height of the turbulent layer increases. Particular emphasis will be placed on the recently discovered regime of shielded mesoscale vortices whose generation may disrupt the inverse energy cascade familiar from 2D turbulence with random stirring. Properties of the resulting chiral mesoscale vortex gas will be studied as a function of the layer height, as will the transition to a vortex crystal that takes place at high vortex density in 2D. The Reynolds number will be varied systematically to bridge the gap between these phenomena and related states in bacterial suspensions at low Reynolds numbers. The possibility of an analogous state in rapidly rotating 3D turbulence will be investigated in detail using a new reformulation of the Navier-Stokes fluid equations, extending direct numerical simulations to smaller Rossby numbers, together with a theoretical analysis dissecting the amplitude-phase relationships between large-scale structures and small-scale turbulence.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.