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Updated: Apr 19, 2026

Preparation of Free-Surface Hyperbolic Water Vortices
Published on: July 28, 2023
Universal profile of the vortex condensate in two-dimensional turbulence
Jason Laurie1, Guido Boffetta2, Gregory Falkovich3
1Physics of Complex Systems, Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot 76100, Israel.
Abstract:
An inverse turbulent cascade in a restricted two-dimensional periodic domain creates a condensate-a pair of coherent system-size vortices. We perform extensive numerical simulations of this system and carry out theoretical analysis based on momentum and energy exchanges between the turbulence and the vortices. We show that the vortices have a universal internal structure independent of the type of small-scale dissipation, small-scale forcing, and boundary conditions. The theory predicts not only the vortex inner region profile, but also the amplitude, which both perfectly agree with the numerical data.
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