Research projects (past and present)

Turbulent transport accross zonal jets

What is the feedback effect of zonal jets on turbulent transport?

Is the "suppression" of transport by zonal jets observed in Earth oceans also valid for gas giant regimes of zonostrophic turbulence?

What are the implications in terms of meridional transport of heat and materials?

Quasi-linear modelling of zonal jets coalescence, wave-mean flow interactions

What factors control the meridional scale and amplitude of equilibration of zonal winds on Jupiter? I propose to tackle this long-standing question by a quasi-linear modelling of wave-driven zonal jets, in a similar fashion as the Holton-Lindzen-Plumb model for mean flow reversals in stratified flows.

The dynamics of icy oceans worlds

This project was started with my postdoc at UTIG (Austin, TX) and builds on Krista's study of the oceanic circulation in icy moons. We are interested in understanding how inhomogeneous heating from Europa’s mantle can influence the thermal convection in the ocean and the associated heat and material exchanges with the ice crust covering the ocean. We use the open source code Magic [https://magic-sph.github.io/] to simulate rotating thermal convection in spherical shells.

Clusters of vortices

We aim at experimentally studying the interaction and organization of multiple cyclones on the gamma-plane (polar beta-effect). Under which conditions do they merge or equilibrate as a cluster around the pole?

This project, started at the end of my PhD, is currently under investigation by Djihane Benzzegoutta as part of her PhD at IRPHE in Marseille.

Zonal jets formation and equilibration

During my PhD, I built an experimental setup where zonal jets can spontaneously emerge from a fast-rotating, tubulent flow forced at small scale.

We identified distinct flow regimes with instantaneous zonal jets and showed that Rossby waves, and the feedback of the zonal flow on those waves, play a key role in determining the flow regime as well as the observed nonlinear saturation.

For more details: https://arxiv.org/abs/2008.10304 (JFM paper) and https://arxiv.org/abs/2011.12178 (PRF paper).

See also our Gallery of Fluid Motion poster: https://doi.org/10.1103/APS.DFD.2019.GFM.P0015

Floating vortices under the action of shear

Experiments undertaken at IRPHE lab, Marseille, France, with Giulio Facchini, Benjamin Favier and Michael Le Bars, during an internship. We studied the equilibration of anticyclones in the presence of background rotation, stratification and shear, to simulate Jovian vortices embedded into zonal jets.

Based on the vortices strength and internal structure, and the background flow parameters, we can predict their three-dimensional shape and extrapolate our predictions to Jupiter's vortices which depth is currently unknown.

For more details: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41567-020-0833-9 (Nature Physics paper)

Libration-driven turbulent flows in the presence of an inner core

Experiments undertaken at SpinLab, UCLA (Los Angeles), with Alex Grannan and Jon Aurnou, during an internship. We studied the influence of an inner core (inside of an ellipsoidal container), on the onset and dynamics of the libration-driven elliptical instability (LDEI). We extrapolated our results to address the relevance of such mechanically forced turbulence in planetary core.

For more details: doi: 10.1002/2017JE005340 (JGR Planets paper)

See our video submitted at the Gallery of Fluid Motion about these experiments.

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