Inertial wave attractors in rapidly rotating tilted cuboids

Abstract

Flows in rapidly rotating fluid-filled containers are strongly constrained by the restorative Coriolis force. Their responses to small amplitude perturbations may result in the excitation of regular modes of the container for some very selective geometries, but in general the response is a network of inertial wave beams. Due to the peculiar laws governing how these beams reflect, the network of reflected beams may focus onto highly localized regions of the container, where the beam energy and wavenumber become unbounded in the absence of viscous and nonlinear processes. Here, we explore in detail this focusing of wave beams in cuboids, enabling a comprehensive analysis of this intriguing process.