QUASI-GEOSTRIPHIC WAVES IN THE EARTH CORE

N. Schaeffer, LGIT - Université Joseph Fourier,

joint work with D. Jault.


Geostrophic motions travelling as Alfv\'en waves have been shown recently to arise spontaneously among the transient axisymmetric motions generated by an impulsive forcing in a rapidly rotating spherical cavity permeated by an axisymmetric magnetic field [Jault08]. We generalize this result to the non axisymmetric case, and broader forcing types as we are seeking to give the range of length and time scales in which quasi-geostrophic motions account for the main part of the Earh's core dynamics.
The quite surprising result is that the quasi-geostrophic behavior is observed even for magnetic field strength comparable to the Coriolis force, that is \Lambda = \frac{\sigma B^2}{\Omega \rho} \simeq 1
Our numerical study spans impulsive to finite time forcing of the inner core in axisymmetric and non-axisymmetric magnetic fields, but also gaussian shaped forcing in the bulk of the fluid.