A Hydrodynamic Analog of the Casimir Effect in Wave-Driven Turbulent Flows

Abstract

We present experimental results on a fluctuation-induced force observed in Faraday wave-driven turbulence. As recently reported, a long-range attraction force arises between two walls that confine the wave-driven turbulent flow. In the Faraday waves system, the turbulent fluid motion is coupled with the disordered wave motion. This study describes the emergence of the fluctuation-induced force from the viewpoint of the wave dynamics. The wave amplitude is unaffected by the confinement while the wave erratic motion is. As the wall spacing decreases, the wave motion becomes less energetic and more anisotropic in the cavity formed by the walls, giving rise to a stronger attraction. These results clarify why the modelling of the attraction force in this system cannot be based on the wave amplitude but has to be built upon the wave-fluid motion coupling. When the wall spacing is comparable to the wavelength, an intermittent wave resonance is observed, and it leads to a complex short-range interaction. These results contribute to the study of aggregation processes in the presence of turbulence and its related problems such as the accumulation of plastic debris in coastal marine ecosystems or the modelling of planetary formation.