Turbulence of internal gravity waves in the laboratory

In this article, we review the recent efforts of several teams that aimed at observing in the laboratory a turbulence of internal gravity waves in a density stratified fluid in the weakly non-linear regime. The common feature to these studies is that they adopted the same strategy of injecting energ...

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Main Authors: Cortet, Pierre-Philippe, Lanchon, Nicolas
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Académie des sciences 2024-09-01
Series:Comptes Rendus. Physique
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Online Access:https://comptes-rendus.academie-sciences.fr/physique/articles/10.5802/crphys.192/
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author Cortet, Pierre-Philippe
Lanchon, Nicolas
author_facet Cortet, Pierre-Philippe
Lanchon, Nicolas
author_sort Cortet, Pierre-Philippe
collection DOAJ
description In this article, we review the recent efforts of several teams that aimed at observing in the laboratory a turbulence of internal gravity waves in a density stratified fluid in the weakly non-linear regime. The common feature to these studies is that they adopted the same strategy of injecting energy in weakly non-linear waves before increasing the forcing amplitude in order to trigger a transition to a wave turbulence regime. The motivation to these works is twofold. On the one hand, it has long been proposed that the dynamics of small oceanic scales is driven by a regime of weakly non-linear internal wave turbulence, without however a definitive confirmation so far. A better understanding of the weakly non-linear internal wave turbulence thus appears as an important lever for improving the parameterization of small oceanic scales in climate models. On the other hand, the identification of valid solutions to the theory of internal gravity wave turbulence is still an open problem, and the experimental observation of this regime is therefore of great interest to guide future theoretical developments. We conclude that two features should be improved in the experiments in order to access to a genuine weakly non-linear wave turbulence in the laboratory. First, one should mitigate the finite size effects and especially prevent the concentration of the energy in wave eigenmodes of the fluid domain. Second, one should implement a significant increase of the wavelength at which the energy is injected in order to access to larger Reynolds numbers and lower flow Froude numbers and build a turbulence with well developed power law spectra while remaining in the weakly non-linear regime.
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spelling doaj-art-ee83c7e19f7e4b2da913f4007586cfa02025-02-07T13:54:24ZengAcadémie des sciencesComptes Rendus. Physique1878-15352024-09-0112010.5802/crphys.19210.5802/crphys.192Turbulence of internal gravity waves in the laboratoryCortet, Pierre-Philippe0https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0444-0906Lanchon, Nicolas1https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3931-7334Université Paris-Saclay, CNRS, FAST, 91405 Orsay, FranceUniversité Paris-Saclay, CNRS, FAST, 91405 Orsay, FranceIn this article, we review the recent efforts of several teams that aimed at observing in the laboratory a turbulence of internal gravity waves in a density stratified fluid in the weakly non-linear regime. The common feature to these studies is that they adopted the same strategy of injecting energy in weakly non-linear waves before increasing the forcing amplitude in order to trigger a transition to a wave turbulence regime. The motivation to these works is twofold. On the one hand, it has long been proposed that the dynamics of small oceanic scales is driven by a regime of weakly non-linear internal wave turbulence, without however a definitive confirmation so far. A better understanding of the weakly non-linear internal wave turbulence thus appears as an important lever for improving the parameterization of small oceanic scales in climate models. On the other hand, the identification of valid solutions to the theory of internal gravity wave turbulence is still an open problem, and the experimental observation of this regime is therefore of great interest to guide future theoretical developments. We conclude that two features should be improved in the experiments in order to access to a genuine weakly non-linear wave turbulence in the laboratory. First, one should mitigate the finite size effects and especially prevent the concentration of the energy in wave eigenmodes of the fluid domain. Second, one should implement a significant increase of the wavelength at which the energy is injected in order to access to larger Reynolds numbers and lower flow Froude numbers and build a turbulence with well developed power law spectra while remaining in the weakly non-linear regime.https://comptes-rendus.academie-sciences.fr/physique/articles/10.5802/crphys.192/Internal gravity wavesStratified fluidsTurbulenceOceans
spellingShingle Cortet, Pierre-Philippe
Lanchon, Nicolas
Turbulence of internal gravity waves in the laboratory
Comptes Rendus. Physique
Internal gravity waves
Stratified fluids
Turbulence
Oceans
title Turbulence of internal gravity waves in the laboratory
title_full Turbulence of internal gravity waves in the laboratory
title_fullStr Turbulence of internal gravity waves in the laboratory
title_full_unstemmed Turbulence of internal gravity waves in the laboratory
title_short Turbulence of internal gravity waves in the laboratory
title_sort turbulence of internal gravity waves in the laboratory
topic Internal gravity waves
Stratified fluids
Turbulence
Oceans
url https://comptes-rendus.academie-sciences.fr/physique/articles/10.5802/crphys.192/
work_keys_str_mv AT cortetpierrephilippe turbulenceofinternalgravitywavesinthelaboratory
AT lanchonnicolas turbulenceofinternalgravitywavesinthelaboratory