UC San Diego

Using tomographic synthetic schlieren, we are able to reconstruct the three-dimensional density field of internal waves. In this study, the waves are radiating from an oscillating sphere positioned eccentrically at the surface of a paraboloidal domain filled with a uniformly stratified fluid. We find that the prediction by ray tracing corresponds well with the observed intensities of the wave field. Remarkably, for a specific value of the forcing frequency, we observe convergence of internal wave energy to an internal wave attractor. The attractor is found to dominate fluid motion in the plane perpendicular to the plane spanned by the symmetry axis and the oscillator position.