Impact of domain anisotropy on the inverse cascade in geostrophic turbulent convection

The effect of domain anisotropy on the inverse cascade occurring within the geostrophic turbulence regime of rapidly rotating Rayleigh-Benard convection is investigated. In periodic domains with square cross-section in the horizontal, a domain-filling dipole state is present. For rectangular periodic domains, a Kolmogorov-like flow parallel to the short side and consisting of a periodic array of alternating unidirectional jets with embedded vortices is observed, together with an underlying weak meandering transverse jet. Similar transitions occurring in weakly dissipative two-dimensional flows driven by externally imposed small-amplitude noise and in classical hydrostatic geostrophic turbulence are a consequence of inviscid conservation of energy and potential enstrophy, and can be understood using statistical mechanics considerations. Rotating Rayleigh-Benard convection represents an important three-dimensional system with only one inviscid invariant which nonetheless exhibits large-scale structures driven by intrinsically generated fluctuations.