Equilibration of centrifugally unstable vortices: A review

In three-dimensional flow, a vortex can become turbulent and be destroyed through a variety of instabilities. In rotating flow, however, the result of the breakup of a vortex is usually a state comprising several vortices with their axes aligned along the ambient rotation direction. This article is a review of our recent work on how the combined effect of centrifugal and barotropic instabilities can breakup a vortex and lead to its reformation in a predictable way even though an intermediate stage in the evolution is turbulent. Centrifugal instability tends to force the unstable vortex into a turbulent state that mixes absolute angular momentum in such a way as to precondition the flow for a subsequent barotropic instability. A method for predicting the redistribution of angular momentum and the resulting velocity profile is discussed. The barotropic instability horizontally redistributes the component of vorticity that is aligned along the ambient rotation vector, resulting in the final byproducts of the instability, which are stabilized by the effects of ambient rotation. A prediction scheme that puts the tendencies of these two instabilities together proves to be very reliable.