Document Type

Article

Date of Original Version

2008

Department

Oceanography

Abstract

The evolution of a self-propelling vortex dipole, embedded in an external nondivergent flow with constant potential vorticity, is studied in an equivalent-barotropic model commonly used in geophysical, astrophysical and plasma studies. In addition to the conservation of the Hamiltonian for an arbitrary point vortex dipole, it is found that the angular momentum is also conserved when the external flow is axisymmetric. This reduces the original four degrees of freedom to only two, so that the solution is expressed in quadratures. In particular, the scattering of antisymmetric dipoles approaching from the infinity is analyzed in the presence of an axisymmetric oceanic flow typical for the vicinity of isolated seamounts.

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.

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