On the lifetime of a pancake anticyclone in a rotating stratified flow

We present an experimental study of the time evolution of an isolated anticyclonic pancake vortex in a laboratory rotating stratified flow. Motivations come from the variety of compact anticyclones observed to form and persist for a strikingly long lifetime in geophysical and astrophysical settings combining rotation and stratification. We generate anticyclones by injecting a small amount of isodense fluid at the center of a rotating tank filled with salty water linearly stratified in density. Our two control parameters are the Coriolis parameter $f$ and the Brunt-V\"ais\"al\"a frequency $N$. We observe that anticyclones always slowly decay by viscous diffusion, spreading mainly in the horizontal direction irrespective of the initial aspect ratio. This behavior is correctly explained by a linear analytical model in the limit of small Rossby and Ekman numbers, where density and velocity equations reduce to a single equation for the pressure. Direct numerical simulations further confirm the theoretical predictions. Notably, they show that the azimuthal shear stress generates secondary circulations, which advect the density anomaly: this mechanism is responsible for the slow time evolution, rather than the classical viscous dissipation of the azimuthal kinetic energy.