Exponentially growing solutions in homogeneous Rayleigh-Bénard convection.

ABSTRACT

It is shown that homogeneous Rayleigh-Bénard flow, i.e., Rayleigh-Bénard turbulence with periodic boundary conditions in all directions and a volume forcing of the temperature field by a mean gradient, has a family of exact, exponentially growing, separable solutions of the full nonlinear system of equations. These solutions are clearly manifest in numerical simulations above a computable critical value of the Rayleigh number. In our numerical simulations they are subject to secondary numerical noise and resolution dependent instabilities that limit their growth to produce statistically steady turbulent transport.