CONICET | Buscador de Institutos y Recursos Humanos

We quantify the strength of the waves and their impact on the energy cascade in rotating turbulence by studying the wave number and frequency energy spectrum, and the time correlation functions of individual Fourier modes in numerical simulations in three dimensions in periodic boxes. From the spectrum, we ﬁnd that a signiﬁcant fraction of the energy is concentrated in modes with wave frequency ω ≈ 0, even when the external forcing injects no energy directly into these modes. However, for modes for which the period of the inertial waves τω is faster than the turnover time τNL, a signiﬁcant fraction of the remaining energy is concentrated in the modes that satisfy the dispersion relation of the waves. No evidence of accumulation of energy in the modes with τω = τNL is observed, unlike what critical balance arguments predict. From the time correlation functions, we ﬁnd that for modes with τω < τsw (with τsw the sweeping time) the dominant decorrelation time is the wave period, and that these modes also show a slower modulation on the timescale τNL as assumed in wave turbulence theories. The rest of the modes are decorrelated with the sweeping time, including the very energetic modes with ω ≈ 0. C 2014 AIP Publishing LLC. [http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.4868280]