Complete classification of discrete resonant Rossby/drift wave triads on periodic domains

Abstract

We consider the set of Diophantine equations that arise in the context of the barotropic vorticity equation on periodic domains, when nonlinear wave interactions are studied to leading order in the amplitudes. The solutions to this set of Diophantine equations are of interest in atmosphere (Rossby waves) and Tokamak plasmas (drift waves), because they provide the values of the spectral wavevectors that interact resonantly via three-wave interactions. These come in "triads", i.e., groups of three wavevectors. We provide the full solution to the Diophantine equations in the case of infinite Rossby deformation radius. The method is completely new, and relies on mapping the unknown variables to rational points on quadratic forms of "Minkowski" type. Classical methods invented centuries ago by Fermat, Euler, Lagrange and Minkowski, are used to classify all solutions to our original Diophantine equations, thus providing a computational method to generate numerically all the resonant triads in the system. Our method has a clear computational advantage over brute-force numerical search: on a 10000^2 grid, the brute-force search would take 15 years using optimised C++ codes, whereas our method takes about 40 minutes. The method is extended to generate quasi-resonant triads, which are defined by relaxing the resonant condition on the frequencies, allowing for a small mismatch. Quasi-resonances are robust with respect to physical perturbations, unlike exact resonances. Therefore, the new method is really valuable in practical terms. We show that the set of quasi-resonances form an intricate network of clusters of connected triads, whose structure depends on the value of the allowed mismatch. We provide some quantitative comparison between the clusters' structure and the onset of fully nonlinear turbulence in the barotropic vorticity equation, and provide perspectives for new research.