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Long-range spatial velocity statistics in a rotating coherent turbulent vortex
We study the spatial dependence of pair correlation functions of velocity field com ponents in a rotating turbulent fluid on a background of a coherent geostrophic vortex. The statistics of the turbulent pulsations are determined by their dynamics, which is the dynamics of inertial waves affected by the differential rotation in the vortex and a weak viscous damping. We are interested in distances which are larger than the scale of the wave forcing but smaller than the radius of the coherent vortex. We establish the anisotropy of the velocity field correlation function at the distances. All the diagonal elements of the correlation function decay logarithmically in the streamwise direction and power-like in radial direction, and the direction along the rotation axis is independent of the details of the forcing correlation function that indicate “coherency” of the flow. On the contrary, the cross-correlation function of the radial-azimuth velocity components, which turns into the Reynolds stress for zero distance, demonstrates strong dependence on the forcing correlation function and decays quickly at distances larger than the forcing scale.