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Updated: Dec 26, 2025

Magnetically Induced Rotating Rayleigh-Taylor Instability
Published on: March 3, 2017
Boundary Zonal Flow in Rotating Turbulent Rayleigh-Bénard Convection
Xuan Zhang1, Dennis P M van Gils1,2, Susanne Horn1,3,4
1Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization, 37077 Göttingen, Germany.
Abstract:
For rapidly rotating turbulent Rayleigh-Bénard convection in a slender cylindrical cell, experiments and direct numerical simulations reveal a boundary zonal flow (BZF) that replaces the classical large-scale circulation. The BZF is located near the vertical side wall and enables enhanced heat transport there. Although the azimuthal velocity of the BZF is cyclonic (in the rotating frame), the temperature is an anticyclonic traveling wave of mode one, whose signature is a bimodal temperature distribution near the radial boundary. The BZF width is found to scale like Ra^{1/4}Ek^{2/3} where the Ekman number Ek decreases with increasing rotation rate.
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