Triadic resonances in the wide-gap spherical Couette system

Abstract

The spherical Couette system, consisting of a viscous fluid between two differentially rotating concentric spheres, is studied using numerical simulations and compared with experiments performed at BTU Cottbus-Senftenberg, Germany. We concentrate on the case where the outer boundary rotates fast enough for the Coriolis force to play an important role in the force balance, and the inner boundary rotates slower or in the opposite direction as compared to the outer boundary. As the magnitude of differential rotation is increased, the system is found to transition through three distinct hydrodynamic regimes. The first regime consists of the emergence of the first non-axisymmetric instability. Thereafter one finds the onset of ‘fast’ equatorially antisymmetric inertial modes, with pairs of inertial modes forming triadic resonances with the first instability. A further increase in the magnitude of differential rotation leads to the flow transitioning to turbulence. Using an artificial excitation, we study how the background flow modifies the inertial mode frequency and structure, thereby causing departures from the eigenmodes of a full sphere and a spherical shell. We investigate triadic resonances of pairs of inertial modes with the fundamental instability. We explore possible onset mechanisms through numerical experiments.