Internal Wave Excitation by Turbulent Convection

Convection near a stably stratified region can excite internal gravity waves. This occurs in a wide range of geophysical settings, including the Earth’s atmosphere and core, as well as in astrophysical systems like some gas giants like Saturn, and most stars including the sun. In each of these circumstances, the wave excitation mechanism and subsequent wave energy flux spectrum is of great interest. In this work, we study both the excitation mechanism and the wave energy flux spectrum by a combination of experiments and numerical simulations. We find the waves are excited in the bulk of the convective region. Preliminary comparisons to analytic predictions of the wave energy flux are presented.