Statistical analysis of vortex condensate motion in two-dimensional turbulence

Abstract

An inverse turbulent cascade in a periodic square box produces a coherent system-sized vortex dipole. We study the statistics of its motion by carrying out direct numerical simulations performed for various bottom friction α, pumping intensity ε, and fluid hyperviscosity ν. In the main approximation, coherent vortices can be considered as point vortices, and within this model, they drift at the same dipole velocity, which is determined by their circulation and mutual arrangement. The characteristic value of the dipole velocity is more than an order of magnitude smaller than the polar velocity inside coherent vortices. Turbulent fluctuations give rise to a relative velocity between the vortices, which changes the distance between them. We found that for a strong condensate, the probability density function of the vector ρ, describing the difference in the mutual arrangement of coherent vortices from half the diagonal of the computational domain, has the form of a ring. The radius of the ring weakly depends on control parameters and its width is proportional to parameter δ=ϵ−1/3L2/3α, where ϵ is the inverse energy flux and L is the system size. The random walk around the ring, caused by turbulent fluctuations, has superdiffusion behavior at intermediate times. It results in a finite correlation time of the dipole velocity, which is of the order of turnover time τK=L2/3ϵ−1/3 of system-size eddies produced by an inverse turbulent cascade. The results obtained deepen the understanding of the processes governing the motion of coherent vortices.