Entropy and energy spectra in low-Prandtl-number convection with rotation

Abstract

We present results for entropy and kinetic energy spectra computed from direct numerical simulations for low-Prandtl-number ($Pr < 1$) turbulent flow in Rayleigh-Bénard convection with uniform rotation about a vertical axis. The simulations are performed in a three-dimensional periodic box for a range of Taylor number ($ 0 \leq Ta \leq 10^8$) and reduced Rayleigh number $r = Ra/Ra_{\circ} (Ta, Pr)$ ($1.0 \times 10^2 \le r \le 5.0 \times 10^3$). The Rossby number $Ro$ varies in the range $1.34 \le Ro \le 73$. The entropy spectrum $E_θ(k)$ shows bi-splitting into two branches for lower values of wave number $k$. The entropy in the lower branch scales with $k$ as $k^{-1.4\pm 0.1}$ for $r > 10^3$ for the rotation rates considered here. The entropy in the upper branch also shows scaling behavior with $k$, but the scaling exponent decreases with increasing $Ta$ for all $r$. The energy spectrum $E_v(k)$ is also found to scale with the wave number $k$ as $k^{-1.4\pm 0.1}$ for $r > 10^3$. The scaling exponent for the energy spectrum and the lower branch of the entropy spectrum vary between $-1.7$ to $-2.4$ for lower values of $r$ ($< 10^3$). We also provide some simple arguments based on the variation of the Kolmogorov picture to support the results of simulations.

12 pages, 8 postscript figures, 1 table, A slightly modified version is to appear in Physical Review E