Fluid Dynamics Laboratory
The ICTP Fluid Dynamics Laboratory is a world‐class research
facility whose activities range from quantum to classical fluid
flows and whose centrepiece is an apparatus capable of producing
the highest levels of controlled buoyancy‐driven turbulence in the
world. It operates at a temperature of near‐absolute zero and
provides high‐resolution data at the far frontier of fluid
dynamics.
From its position atop a rotating platform, ICTP's turbulent
convection experiment provides data applicable to large‐scale
natural phenomena like atmospheric and solar convection in a range
of control parameters not possible elsewhere.
Recent experiments have taken particular advantage of the
possibility to apply more realistic boundary conditions,
particularly the more two‐dimensional aspect ratios characteristic
of natural extended systems. Novel techniques involving the
propagation of high frequency thermal waves have made it possible
to provide the first direct mapping of a thermally
"superconducting" core at high turbulent intensities, which has
been one of the key assumptions in phenomenological theories of
turbulent convection.
