Diffusive instabilities of baroclinic lenticular vortices

TL;DR

This paper analyzes the stability of baroclinic lenticular vortices in stratified viscous fluids, deriving conditions for their stability and identifying mechanisms of destabilization, with implications for fluid dynamics and vortex behavior.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive stability analysis of baroclinic vortices using geometric optics and algebraic criteria, revealing how diffusion and parameter variations affect vortex stability.

Findings

Stability conditions are reduced to three inequalities in parameter space.

Destabilization can occur via stationary or oscillatory axisymmetric instabilities.

A singularity in the neutral stability curve occurs at a codimension-2 point.

Abstract

We consider a model of a circular lenticular vortex immersed into a deep and vertically stratified viscous fluid in the presence of gravity and rotation. The vortex is assumed to be baroclinic with a Gaussian profile of angular velocity both in the radial and axial directions. Assuming the base state to be in a cyclogeostrophic balance, we derive linearized equations of motion and seek for their solution in a geometric optics approximation to find amplitude transport equations that yield a comprehensive dispersion relation. Applying algebraic Bilharz criterion to the latter, we establish that stability conditions are reduced to three inequalities that define stability domain in the space of parameters. The main destabilization mechanism is either stationary or oscillatory axisymmetric instability depending on the Schmidt number ($Sc$), vortex Rossby number and the difference between the radial and axial density gradients as well as the difference between the epicyclic and vertical oscillation frequencies. We discover that the boundaries of the regions of stationary and oscillatory axisymmetric instabilities meet at a codimension-2 point, forming a singularity of the neutral stability curve. We give an exhaustive classification of the geometry of the stability boundary, depending on the values of the Schmidt number. Although we demonstrate that the centrifugally stable (unstable) Gaussian lens can be destabilized (stabilized) by the differential diffusion of mass and momentum and that destabilization can happen even in the limit of vanishing diffusion, we also describe explicitly a set of parameters in which the Gaussian lens is stable for all $Sc>0$.