# Internal wave attractors: different scenarios of instability

## TL;DR

This study experimentally investigates various instability scenarios in internal wave attractors within a trapezoidal domain, revealing how nonlinear effects, confinement, and energy levels influence wave resonance, instability onset, and mixing behavior.

## Contribution

It introduces new insights into the nonlinear instability scenarios and long-term dynamics of internal wave attractors, including a novel intermediate instability regime and universal mixing properties.

## Key findings

- Triadic instability onset varies with confinement and energy levels.
- A new intermediate instability scenario for weak focusing is identified.
- High energy levels lead to a universal 'mixing box' regime with mixing indicators.

## Abstract

This paper presents an experimental study of different instability scenarios in a parallelogram-shaped internal wave attractor in a trapezoidal domain filled with a uniformly stratified fluid. Energy is injected into the system via the oscillatory motion of a vertical wall of the trapezoidal domain. Whole-field velocity measurements are performed with the conventional PIV technique. In the linear regime, the total kinetic energyof the fluid system is used to quantify the strength of attractors as a function of coordinates in the parameter spacedefining their zone of existence, the so-called Arnold tongue. In the nonlinear regime, the choice of the operational point in the Arnold tongue is shown to have a significant impact on the scenario of the onset of triadic instability, most notably on the influence of confinement on secondary waves. The onset of triadic resonance instability may occur as a spatially localized event similar to Scolan, Ermanyuk and Dauxois (2013) in the case of strong focusing or in form of growing normal modes as in McEwan (1971) for the limiting case of rectangular domain. In the present paper, we describe also a new intermediate scenario for the case of weak focusing. We explore the long-term behaviour of cascades of triadic instabilities in wave attractors and show a persistent trend toward formation of standing-wave patterns corresponding to some discrete peaks of the frequency spectrum. At sufficiently high level of energy injection the system exhibits a "mixing box" regime which has certain qualitatively universal properties regardless to the choiceof the operating point in the Arnold tongue. In particular, for this regime, we observe a statisticsof events with high horizontal vorticity, which serve as kinematic indicators of mixing.