Inverse energy cascade and emergence of large coherent vortices in turbulence driven by Faraday waves
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Updated: May 11, 2026

Preparation of Free-Surface Hyperbolic Water Vortices
Published on: July 28, 2023
N Francois1, H Xia, H Punzmann
1Research School of Physics and Engineering, The Australian National University, Canberra ACT 0200, Australia.
Abstract:
We report the generation of large coherent vortices via inverse energy cascade in Faraday wave driven turbulence. The motion of floaters in the Faraday waves is three dimensional, but its horizontal velocity fluctuations show unexpected similarity with two-dimensional turbulence. The inverse cascade is detected by measuring frequency spectra of the Lagrangian velocity, and it is confirmed by computing the third moment of the horizontal velocity fluctuations. This is observed in deep water in a broad range of wavelengths and vertical accelerations. The results broaden the scope of recent findings on Faraday waves in thin layers [A. von Kameke et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 107, 074502 (2011)].
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