UC Berkeley

Employing a poloidal-toroidal projection technique, a multi-scale analysis of resonant wave triads in columnar vortices is performed to obtain the governing equations of the triadically coupled wave amplitudes. For inviscid flows, we establish that resonance between neutral, smooth waves is conservative, and the temporal evolution of wave amplitudes is either bounded or explosively unstable based on the signs of the triad's interaction coefficients. Assessing the onset of weakly nonlinear instabilities through the pseudoenergy criterion introduced by Cairns (1979, J. Fluid Mech., vol. 92), we use the large-axial-wavenumber asymptotic approach by Le Dizes and Lacaze (2005, J. Fluid Mech., vol. 542) to evaluate each triad member's pseudoenergy and argue against the possibility of explosive conservative three-wave resonance involving only regular Kelvin waves. Additionally, extending our investigation to specific vortices, such as the Lamb-Oseen vortex and the Batchelor vortex, we find that triadic resonance among their neutral modes consistently results in bounded behaviour.