Regimes of stratified turbulence at low Prandtl number

Abstract

Quantifying transport by strongly stratified turbulence in low Prandtl number ($Pr$) fluids is critically important for the development of better models for the structure and evolution of stellar interiors. Motivated by recent numerical simulations showing strongly anisotropic flows suggestive of scale-separated dynamics, we perform a multiscale asymptotic analysis of the governing equations. We find that, in all cases, the resulting slow-fast system naturally takes a quasilinear form. Our analysis also reveals the existence of several distinct dynamical regimes depending on the emergent buoyancy Reynolds and P\'eclet numbers, $Re_b = \alpha^2 Re$ and $Pe_b = Pr Re_b$, respectively, where $\alpha$ is the aspect ratio of the large-scale turbulent flow structures, and $Re$ is the outer scale Reynolds number. Scaling relationships relating the aspect ratio, the characteristic vertical velocity, and the strength of the stratification (measured by the Froude number $Fr$) naturally emerge from the analysis. When $Pe_b \ll \alpha$, the dynamics at all scales is dominated by buoyancy diffusion, and our results recover the scaling laws empirically obtained from direct numerical simulations by Cope et al. (2020). For $Pe_b \ge O(1)$, diffusion is negligible (or at least subdominant) at all scales and our results are consistent with those of Chini et al. (2022) for strongly stratified geophysical turbulence at $Pr = O(1)$.Finally, we have identified a new regime for $\alpha \ll Pe_b \ll 1$, in which slow, large scales are diffusive while fast, small scales are not. We conclude by presenting a map of parameter space that clearly indicates the transitions between isotropic turbulence, non-diffusive stratified turbulence, diffusive stratified turbulence and viscously-dominated flows.Comment: 25 pages, 1 figur