Staircasing and Bursting Events in Jovian Zonal Flows, Couette-Taylor Flows, Protoplanetary Disks, and Their Consequences

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• Philip Marcus (University of California, Berkeley)
• Tuesday 16 January 2024, 09:00-10:00
• Seminar Room 1, Newton Institute.

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ADIW01 - Layering — A structure formation mechanism in oceans, atmospheres, active fluids and plasmas

We examine the role of staircasing in creating and maintaining the Jovian east-west, zone-belt system. Small-scale forcing, along with the inverse cascade of kinetic energy and the anisotropic effects of Coriolis force can create zonal flows with north-spacings that are similar to those observed on Jupiter. Those length scales are determined by the local Rossby deformation radius rather than the Rhines length, which is more appropriate in the understanding of the differential energy spectrum of the zonal flows, rather than determining the largest scales of the flows. The staircasing homogenizes the potential vorticity into steps, and the flows undergo intermittent bursting when the number of steps in the staircase intermittently change to a larger or smaller number. In contrast, the staircasing observed in some Couette-Taylor flows, which is a strongly forced and damped system, is due to the homogenization of angular momentum. In these flows, the intermittent  bursting is not due to changes in the number of steps, but due to the cyclic, but intermittent, build-up and release of energy in the flow. In protoplanetary disks, the Keplerian velocity is modified into a staircase by the zombie vortex instability, which is due to the radial sequence of baroclinic critical layers in the disk flow. Similar to the east-west, zone-belt system, the intermittent bursting in the protoplanetary disk flows occurs when the number of steps in the staircase intermittently changes to a larger or smaller number. Some consequences of the staircasing, and bursting on vortices, including the Great Red Spot of Jupiter, will be presented.

This talk is part of the Isaac Newton Institute Seminar Series series.

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