Observation of an internal wave attractor in a confined, stably stratified fluid

Leo R. M. Maas (), Dominique Benielli, Joël Sommeria and Frans-Peter A. Lam
Additional contact information
Leo R. M. Maas: Netherlands Institute for Sea Research
Dominique Benielli: Ecole Normale et Superieure de Lyon, Laboratoire de Physique
Joël Sommeria: Ecole Normale et Superieure de Lyon, Laboratoire de Physique
Frans-Peter A. Lam: Netherlands Institute for Sea Research

Nature, 1997, vol. 388, issue 6642, 557-561

Abstract: Abstract When a container of water is vibrated, its response can be described in terms of large-scale standing waves—the eigenmodes of the system. The belief that enclosed continuous media always possess eigenmodes is deeply rooted. Internal gravity waves in uniformly stratified fluids, however, present a counterexample. Such waves propagate at a fixed angle to the vertical that is determined solely by the forcing frequency, and a sloping side wall of the container will therefore act as a lens, resulting in ray convergence or divergence. An important consequence of this geometric focusing is the prediction1 that, following multiple reflections, these waves will evolve onto specific paths—or attractors—whose locations are determined only by the frequency. Here we report the results of laboratory experiments that confirm that internal-wave attractors, rather than eigenmodes, determine the response of a confined, stably stratified fluid over a broad range of vibration frequencies. The existence of such attractors could be important for mixing processes in ocean basins and lakes, and may be useful for analysing oscillations of the Earth's liquid core and the stability of spinning, fluid-filled spacecraft.

Date: 1997
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/41509 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:nature:v:388:y:1997:i:6642:d:10.1038_41509

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/

DOI: 10.1038/41509

Access Statistics for this article

Nature is currently edited by Magdalena Skipper

More articles in Nature from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().