Velocimetry in rapidly rotating convection: spatial correlations, flow structures and length scales

TL;DR

This study uses stereoscopic particle image velocimetry to analyze flow structures, length scales, and organization in rapidly rotating convection, revealing features like convective Taylor columns, plumes, and quadrupolar vortices in the geostrophic regime.

Contribution

It provides detailed experimental measurements of flow structures and spatial correlations in the geostrophic regime of rotating convection, a challenging parameter space to explore.

Findings

Identification of convective Taylor columns and plumes via spatial correlations.

Observation of quadrupolar vortex organization at higher Rayleigh numbers.

Quantitative analysis of flow length scales in the geostrophic regime.

Abstract

Rotating Rayleigh--B\'enard convection is an oft-employed model system to evaluate the interplay of buoyant forcing and Coriolis forces due to rotation, an eminently relevant interaction of dynamical effects found in many geophysical and astrophysical flows. These flows display extreme values of the governing parameters: large Rayleigh numbers $Ra$, quantifying the strength of thermal forcing, and small Ekman numbers $E$, a parameter inversely proportional to the rotation rate. This leads to the dominant geostrophic balance of forces in the flow between pressure gradient and Coriolis force. The so-called geostrophic regime of rotating convection is difficult to study with laboratory experiments and numerical simulations given the requirements to attain simultaneously large $Ra$ values and small values of $E$. Here, we use flow measurements using stereoscopic particle image velocimetry in a large-scale rotating convection apparatus in a horizontal plane at mid-height to study the rich flow phenomenology of the geostrophic regime of rotating convection. We quantify the horizontal length scales of the flow using spatial correlations of vertical velocity and vertical vorticity, reproducing features of the convective Taylor columns and plumes flow states both part of the geostrophic regime. Additionally, we find in this horizontal plane an organisation into a quadrupolar vortex at higher Rayleigh numbers starting from the plumes state.